


Clockwork Little Happiness

by DottedLine, Person



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, God Tier Big Bang, Human AU, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-07
Updated: 2011-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:38:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 53,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottedLine/pseuds/DottedLine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At age thirteen Aradia Megido's life is destroyed, but in the process she gains powers she never would have imagined.  With nothing else to do with herself she decides to use those powers to become the superheroine The Maid of Time... a heroine who soon catches the eye of Equius Zahhak, a wealthy young businessman who's spent his life hiding powers of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Origin One: Rubble

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everybody! If you've read any of my (that is, Person's) other fics you might have already guessed that this is inspired by the ficlet I wrote for the AU genre in the situation meme, although it's massively AU from it.
> 
> There's also an FST I put together to go with the story [in my livejournal](http://haku-kaen.livejournal.com/138854.html), but I don't recommend reading through the reasons behind my song calls until you've read the fic. There are many spoilers there!

Aradia was thirteen years old and already head-over heels in love with the remnants of the past the first and only time that her mother let her along on an excavation. There were reams of rules that she needed to agreed to follow if she wanted to be allowed anywhere near the site--all of which basically boiled down to not being allowed to touch _anything_ no matter how much her fingers itched to grab a brush and join in, or even to step foot in the ruins unless her mom was right beside her--but she would have happily agreed to just about anything if it meant she was allowed to be there.

Especially when the altarnative would have been either becoming somebody's houseguest for longer than they'd probably have wanted her or being holed up in her mom's room in the archeologist's lodgings all day every day. In the past she'd always stayed at home with her dad when her mom was away for work, but that was no longer possible; he had died in a car crash a little over a year before. That trip was the first time her mom had taken part in a dig since his death, and neither of them were really sure what would have been done about Aradia if she hadn't agreed to her mother's conditions.

Later she would wish with everything in her that she'd been more stubborn, that instead of just being happy for the chance to be there she'd pressed to be allowed to help until she'd been forbidden to go. For better or for worse she was sure that things would have happened differently if she hadn't been there, and it would have been very difficult for it to be the 'for worse'.

Later still that wish would be buried in guilt. How could she selfishly want something that would undo all the good that only happened because of that trip just to make herself happier?

But at the time her happiness was almost all she thought of, the great giddy joy of getting what she'd wanted and waited for since as far back as she could remember. Which made it strange that when she looked back on that voyage and the preparations leading up to it she could barely remember any of it.

For the most part her mind held only impressions empty of detail. She could remember the heat, temperatures regularly reaching heights that the northern city she lived in only came at all close to during the fiercest heat waves, so rare that she'd only experienced them once or twice in her life. She could remember an excitement that never seemed to fade though she could only recalls snatches of the things it focused on from day to day--a section of a carving, a fragment of a broken jar just large enough to see its curve. She knew that she'd had to put up with a good deal of good-natured ribbing about her Indiana Jones hat, but that part was only to be expected; as much as she liked the movies, and _loved_ the hat, she knew that the character was nothing more than a grave-robber who did things that would get _real_ archaeologists blacklisted by their peers forevermore.

She wished that she could remember more, kept wishing it regularly even years later. Because what she _could_ remember made her think that even if her father's death cast a pall over it, her very presence a constant reminder that he was no longer at home to watch over her that dug at wounds which still weren't fully healed, those weeks at the dig would probably be the last time she'd ever come close to being perfectly happy.

But those memories were overwhelmed, washed away by what ended it.

It had been meant as a special treat, and a special mother-daughter moment while everyone else were working at other parts of the excavation site. Because she'd been so good about following her mother's instructions and not getting in anyone's way she was allowed to see, for the first time, the ancient temple which was the heart of the ruins.

By modern standards it hardly appeared to deserve the name. It was no grand cathedral or stately chapel, just four stone pillars surrounding a low altar at the base of the mountain the ruins they were researching spread out from. There was nothing but rubble strewn about the area to show that a roof had once protected the altar from the elements, but aside from that it was in remarkable condition even after centuries of erosion. The pillars had worn down until there was nothing left to show there had once been carvings in their surface besides a series of irregular grooves along their length, but the altar itself looked almost untouched by time. It was still a neat rectangle, its corners unrounded. Almost no plant life had grown over it, there was just a little moss around the base that stopped less than a quarter of the way up its side. And though there was only a single simple design etched into its surface, that was still as clear as if it had only been chipped into the stone the day before.

It was that decoration that her mom drew her attention to first, her expression just as excited as Aradia was sure her own must have been. "Look here, sweetie, I'm sure you'll think it's interesting," she said, her fingers hovering over the carving without touching it. "It looks just like it's meant to be a clockwork gear, doesn't it? Of course we haven't found anything that would make us believe that the people who created it were advanced enough to understand what one is, right now we're assuming that it's their way of depicting the sun, but isn't it fun to imagine that someday this summer we might find bits of machines far ahead of their time?"

It was the last thing that she ever said to Aradia. The rumbling began almost as soon as the words left her mouth. Aradia learned later that it really wasn't considered much of an earthquake, but to a girl who'd never experienced one before it was shocking.

Aradia stumbled, trying her best to keep to her feet as the world tried to buck her off them, her mind turning wildly as she tried to remember what people were supposed to do during earthquakes. She thought she remembered something about standing in doorways, but that wasn't any help when they were at least a forty-five minute hike away from the closest building that wasn't half-rubble.

She was so occupied with that that she didn't even notice anything that her mother was doing. Later she thought that she must have tried shouting to her, and that it was only Aradia's own lack of attention that made her change tactics and do what she did. Whatever the case, Aradia's attention was only pulled back to her when she gave her a sudden hard shove from behind.

Aradia fell forward, landing right on the altar, and even though there was so much else to worry about that was what filled her mind for a moment. She was _lying on the altar_. That wasn't how you treated the precious treasures of the past! Why would her mother have done that? She'd realize eventually that even then, before she turned around, she should have known that meant that something very wrong had happened; her mother was too dedicated to her job to risk harming such a valuable artifact even in the middle of an emergency.

She rolled over to ask why she'd done that and froze at what she saw, all archeological worries fleeing her mind. One of the pillars had fallen over and crashed down right where she'd been standing, and beneath it...

Beneath...

In her memories she mostly just saw the blood. It was easier to focus on; blood was blood, it could be anyone's. It could even be from an animal. Seeing blood spreading over cracked tiles didn't hurt the same way as seeing a broken bone jutting out of an arm that had given her thousands of hugs over the years. It didn't hurt as much as seeing the body that had curled around her when she'd had nightmares as a little girl pinned beneath the heavy stone. It definitely didn't hurt as much as seeing the beloved face, her _mother's_ face, twisted into a fixed expression of terror, one of her eyes replaced by a hunk of the temple's old roof that she'd landed on when she fell.

Later Aradia would wish that she'd done something. _Anything_. Even though her logical mind knew just from the way she looked that by the time she'd seen her mother she was already beyond any help, there was still that thought; what if she was _wrong?_ What if she'd still been alive, if badly injured, and just looked like she'd already died because she was stunned? What if the pillar wasn't as immovable as it looked, and if she'd only been able to make herself get to her feet she'd have been able to shove it off her mom, drag her somewhere safer, and save her life? Or even just her body, so more than scraps of her could have a proper burial beside Aradia's dad.

If nothing else she could have at least checked her pulse so she'd know for _sure_.

But she hadn't been able to move. Hadn't even been able to think; although she'd been given exhaustive first-aid lessons before being brought on the trip just in case something happened, everything that she'd been taught ran away from her in the moment when they might actually have been of use.

All she could do was keep staring, her mind frozen by horror, her only movement a trembling that seemed to shake her even more strongly than the ground managed. She was still locked in that moment when the earth finally began to settle, in truth only minutes after it had started though to Aradia it felt like it had stretched on and on to just this side of forever. She was still stuck in it when the rocks began falling from the mountain above, boulders and debris loosened by the earthquake gaining momentum and picking up more rubble as they slid down the slope until an outright landslide was tumbling down towards her unaware form.

And she was still caught in it when one of the rocks slammed into the back of her head, cracking her skull open. She died almost instantly, stretched out on the altar like a sacrifice.

Only to wake up again at the sound of voices and find herself on a small cot that she recognized as being one kept in a tent near the excavation site for anyone who needed to grab a nap and didn't have time to head back to their lodgings. She'd used it herself on several occasions.

The relief she felt in that instant was another memory that would always be with her, as was the crushing grief just a moment later when she made out the actual words the voices which had woken her were saying.

"--to do with the poor thing," said the first, which she'd recognized as belonging to Anna Vasquez, her mother's best friend on the dig. She sounded like she'd been crying, and might start again at any moment. "She only just lost her father last year, and I'm sure there's no other close family. The whole reason Miriam brought her along was because there wasn't anybody who could take her in for a few months, let alone for the rest of her childhood."

"Tragic," another person said, although the tone of their voice was flat and unconcerned. It took her longer to recognize this one, but after listening to a little more she realized that it was the project director, Dr. Harrison, a man who'd rarely bothered speaking with her, "but there must be someone we can notify. We can't very well allow the child to remain here unattended; you know that I had my reservations about allowing her here even with Dr. Megido watching over her, and now this."

"Now _this_?" Anna repeated, sounding outraged. "She didn't plan this to cause trouble for you, Charles. The poor girl's mother is dead!"

Aradia moaned low in her throat at actually hearing those words spoken, and the sound must have been louder than she'd thought because an instant later the tent flap flew back and Anna rushed into the room. When she saw that Aradia was awake she pulled her into a hug tight enough to be uncomfortable, murmuring to her, "Oh, honey. Oh you poor, poor baby."

Dr. Harrison followed, his forehead creased with deep worry lines that made the harshness of the things he'd been saying seem a little less cruel when she saw them. "You're a very lucky girl," he said, and that time Aradia thought that maybe it was less that he sounded unconcerned and more that he was attempting to remain controlled in the middle of an incredibly trying situation. "It's amazing that you remained unharmed, given the damage the rockslide did to the area."

"But I wasn't," Aradia whispered, freeing one of her arms from Anna's hug to touch the back of her head. "I wasn't..."

* * *

They assumed that it was the trauma of the experience that made her think she'd been injured, and she had trouble arguing with them even though she was sure that she couldn't have imagined the shattering pain in her head just before she blacked out. There wasn't a single scratch on her. She didn't even have sunburn anymore, even though her shoulder had been bright red and peeling for most of the week. There was no hospital close by but the doctor they brought in said the same thing after examining her closely; unlikely though it seemed she was perfectly fine physically, though he recommended that she see a counselor ASAP because he couldn't speak for how she'd been effected mentally.

She knew that more people than the doctor were worried about that, especially when she wouldn't break down and cry over what had happened. It wasn't that she didn't _want_ to, more than once she needed to sit down for few minutes and be very quiet because she could tell that she was seconds away from losing control and it was the only way of regaining it. Luckily she'd gotten good, since her dad died, at recognizing when tears were coming, because even if she wanted to cry she didn't want to do it around all of _them_. They were her mom's friends and co-workers, not hers; not only would breaking down in front of them be uncomfortable, she knew that she was already causing them enough trouble without making them worry more about consoling her.

Nobody talked much to her about the problem of what to do with her, although she kept hearing people whispering about it to each other only to hush up as soon as they realized she was close by. They did ask her about her family, but there was nothing she could tell them; her only living grandparent was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, and her parents had both been only children. The closest other relative that she knew of was an older second cousin who occasionally showed up for holidays, but she wasn't even sure what her last name was let alone her phone number or address.

It seemed like nobody was sure what the right course of action was. If they had been in America they would have just called the police or social services, but they didn't know if that would do any good when they weren't in their home country. Letting Anna or one of the others take her under their wing was the type of thing that only worked out in movies. And even if they could find a place for her most people thought that it didn't feel right to just send her off when her mother was still buried under the fallen detritus.

Aradia went to bed that night, alone in the room she and her mother had shared, with no idea what her future might hold. But then, it would have been difficult for anyone to predict exactly what turned out to be waiting for her.

She heard the music for the first time that night, while she lie in bed trying to somehow get to sleep. That first time she thought it was somebody's TV or stereo turned up loudly enough for her to hear it through the wall, but that didn't bother her. At least it gave her something to focus on beyond her own thoughts, and besides that she thought that there was something comforting about the sound even though it was like no music she'd heard before.

It was a soft tinkling melody that reminded her of the sound of a music box, but the timing of it was strangely jerky like it was being played backwards. She closed her eyes and concentrated on it, and slowly it seemed as if she were able to twist it in her mind, turning it note by note until she was listening to it the right way around. And gradually a low rumbling began to accompany it, growing louder by the instant.

Eventually she would learn that some moments were easier to return to than others. The times that she couldn't let go of. The situations that she turned over and over in her head to try and see if there was anything she could have done differently, done better, to give them a happier ending. The moments she obsessed over. They were so easy to slip into that she hardly even needed to try, as if they were just inviting her back to relive her failures.

And the easiest moment of all as that first.

When the music faded away and only the rumbling remained she sat up and opened her eyes, ready to go next door and ask the person in the neighboring room if they could either turn their TV down or switch to something that wouldn't remind her so much of what had happened only hours before. Until her eyes opened she would have sworn that nothing could possibly happen before the day finally ended that would shock her more than she already had been. But the world seemed fond of laughing in the face of her expectations that day.

She was _there_ again, somehow hovering in the air above the temple. She saw herself, her head smashed open just the way she'd been sure she remembered. She saw her mother just in time to watch both of their bodies vanish under the rocks, too late again to do anything that might help her.

And she saw the altar begin to glow, the boulders covering it falling away until her body was free. Her blood sank into the stone and seemed to feed the light. It grew brighter until it covered her shattered body, and under her shocked eyes she watched that other her's wounds heal flawlessly closed, even her clothing losing its dirt and tears. When the light faded the Aradia on the altar was in the state that she'd be found in later, for all the world looking like the only thing that had happened to her was an understandable fainting spell.

It would be weeks before she really started to understand how the powers granted to her by the altar worked. She didn't even realize then that it _was_ the altar, still reeling too much to really process the implications of what she'd just watched. Besides, she had something much more important to think about.

Somehow, if she hadn't just fallen asleep and given herself a dream that would let her fix the world for just one night, she had gone back in time. If she'd done it once, why shouldn't she be able to do it again? Why shouldn't she be able to go just a bit further?

Why shouldn't she be able to unmake the day? She could go back to that morning and convince the ignorant care-free her who had no idea how the ruins she loved so much could destroy her life to play sick and beg her mother to stay with her. They'd both be safely in their lodgings when the world began to shake.

The music returned to her easily when she concentrated on going back again, even though she didn't know it was what she was reaching for. The sound of it turned even more quickly from back to front since her mind had gotten the trick of it, and that time she kept her eyes open and was able to see exactly what happened while it played. It was like watching a movie rewind. The ground below her magically cleared, debris flowing back up the mountain it had fallen from. Her body on the altar regained its wounds, vanished again and reappeared in a better state. The blood that covered the altar flowed back into her gaping head wound until there was only a small pool mostly hidden by her hair left, and then...

Then she seemed to slam into a metaphysical brick wall. No matter how hard she scrambled after the music, trying to force it to play on, she could go no further.

She slumped over, tears that she'd been holding in all day burning her eyes as she crumbled under the terrible unfairness of it. Why had she somehow been allowed to go back in time if it wasn't to save her mother? Why did she need to watch it all again and still be as helpless as the first time? Even if she could work out how to make it to the ground from her position in the air there was no way she'd be able to reach it before the rockfall swallowed her mother so she couldn't even drag her out of the way in time.

She didn't want to be there anymore. Not only there in the temple, but there in the whole country where she was just a burden that her mother's co-workers didn't know how to deal with and where the looks on their faces every time they spotted her reminded her of what had happened all over again.

And she knew exactly where she _did_ want to be, although she hadn't mentioned it to anyone asking if there was someone that they could contact that day. She knew they were only interested in family, or other possible guardians. They weren't interested in best friends.

But the music was, it seemed, for as her mind turned towards him it started up once more. The tune was livelier this time; it would take her awhile to start recognizing how different melodies indicated different situations that she'd find herself in once she re-entered the normal time stream, but even then she could tell that visiting a dear friend made for a much more cheerful sound than going to watch herself die.

The room was instantly recognizable as soon as she appeared in it, with its computers, its games, and the weird beekeepers equipment that she never understood his interest in collecting when they lived in the city far away from any bee farm. And, of course, even if she couldn't have recognized all of that, the fact that he was sitting at one of his computers busily coding would have been a big hint that she was in the right place.

"Sollux," she said, then her voice cracked and she couldn't get any other words of greeting out around the lump in her throat.

He almost fell out of his chair, clutching his chest like an old man having a heart attack when he whirled around to face her, his eyes wide behind the colored lenses of his glasses. "Shit," he gasped, "AA, you scared the life out of me. Lucky thing it looks like I've got a spare." He turned towards his bedroom window, the age-old passage that she'd used a billion times to sneak into his room when she wanted to see him but wasn't supposed to be there, and that he'd used just as often to slip out and visit her. Busy trying to work out how she'd gotten in so quietly he missed seeing the pained expression that flit over her face at his choice of words. "Aren't you still supposed to be living it up in South America with all those broken buildings you love so much? How'd you get--" He cut himself off when he turned back and finally seemed to take a good look at her, his mouth twisting into a deep frown. "Aradia, what's wrong with you?"

Even though they'd been best friends since they were in diapers Sollux had never been very comfortable with physical signs of affection, so when she flung herself at him and his arms closed tightly around her without any hesitation at all she knew just how terrible she must look, but she didn't care. "Sollux..." she said, the word almost a whimper as the tears finally started to flow. "Sollux, I don't know what to do. Everything's gone wrong. It's all wrong."


	2. Origin Two: Lineage

Equius' entrance into the world was certainly fitting for a child who would one day decide to dabble in supervillainy. People would have said so, had they somehow known both the circumstances of his birth and the eventual course his life would take, just from the fact that he'd killed his mother coming out of her even if it had happened from one of the usual ways a delivery could go tragically wrong. But there was nothing at all usual in his mother's death and his birth, in the way that his tiny limbs had been so strong that he tore his way out of her body just by kicking the way any fetus did. Even people who would otherwise have said that it was ridiculous to look for signs of villainy in the way a baby was born would have admitted that there was something sinister about that.

Even before then her pregnancy had been hard, his strength enough to injure well before it became powerful enough to kill. Although he was grateful for his life, he would never understand her decision to keep him even after her health deteriorated to the point that she was bedridden and racked with constant pain. If she somehow had managed to bear his strength long enough to give birth to him in the usual fashion there was no possible way that it could have turned out well for her, and he would hardly have blamed her if she'd decided that he wasn't worth sacrificing her health over.

Especially when there was a time, at the beginning, where it looked like that sacrifice would be for nothing. He burst out of her two months premature, and he knew that the doctors had told his father that however extraordinary his physical strength was it could hardly help with underdeveloped organs. They didn't have high hopes for his survival, especially when he kept breaking the incubators they tried putting him into.

They underestimated him. He didn't only have the strength to destroy but to survive, and, eventually, to thrive. A few months later nobody would have guessed that he'd ever been anything but a perfectly healthy newborn, and if they couldn't guess than they'd never know; his father paid good money to everyone who knew the exact circumstances of Equius' birth to ensure that nobody else would _ever_ hear of them unless he chose to let them know. And the only person he ever let know was Equius himself, once he was older, to make sure that he would never forget that he must be careful of his strength at all time.

He didn't really need the reminder. There was no one in the world that he looked up to and respected as much as his father; just knowing that he wanted Equius to keep his strength under control would have been enough to make him try his best to do so, and he'd known that he wanted it without ever needing to be told. It was obvious in the way his father poured money into finding and hiring trainers for him, the type of people who taught other superhumans how to use their powers, only to fire them and start the search anew when they didn't work out.

It wasn't until he was eight that they finally found the woman whose methods worked for him. She was a psychic who, instead of giving him endless frustrating exercises which never did anything but make him angry, let him see through her own mind the exact amount of strength needed to handle different things without breaking them. Always before then he'd had to try and work it out for himself with no real frame of reference for how delicate his touch needed to be to keep things from shattering under it. Once he'd learned he had realized even at that young age that it was no wonder he'd never been able to figure it out for himself; for awhile he always felt like his grasp was so loose that whatever he held would surely fall straight out of it. It didn't start to fade until he finally reached the point where he could reliably pick up anything he wanted, from the most delicate china plate to one of his father's cars, and put it down again safely without needing to think about it.

At the same time his teacher brought with her the first companion his own age that he'd had in his life. It was her own daughter, who she trusted with him because she'd inherited her psychic power and could stop him in his tracks with a thought if he was careless. It was with her that he learned how to interact with another living being without breaking them, a much more important lesson. A plate could always be replaced, but a human life wasn't nearly so cheap.

All the frustration proved worth it for the look on his father's face the first time he was able to sit down at breakfast, pour himself a glass of milk, and drink every drop without even cracking the cup.

So he didn't need the story of his mother's death to remind him of the importance of control. Instead the main lesson he took from it was that he was very lucky that his parents marriage hadn't been based on love. It was something it seemed like he'd always known, that while his father had mourned his mother it had been as a friend and business associate rather than a lover, that they'd decided to marry primarily for the sake of strengthening both of their families. Equius couldn't even imagine how much worse his life would have been if that hadn't been the case, and his father had loved his mother enough for her death to poison his heart against his son. And he couldn't imagine that it _wouldn't_ have been when her death was so obviously his fault, unwitting though it had been, and not just some accident of nature.

But his father hadn't loved his mother, and so there was nothing preventing him from loving his son. And Equius was always aware that he did, even though his business didn't often allow him time for the types of bonding experiences that always showed up in fiction. It was obvious in things like all that effort he put into finding the teacher who finally taught Equius to control his strength, and in the elegant suite of rooms he'd created for him and filled with furnishings which were as sturdy as they were tasteful so he wouldn't need to worry too much about accidentally destroying his things if that control slipped.

It was there in how he always encouraged Equius' interests even if he didn't share them. As far as Equius knew his father had never drawn a bow or ridden a horse in his life, but when he hired a trainer or bought him a gift related to either hobby he always put careful research into his choices to be sure his son got the very best. And he was even more enthusiastic about Equius' interest in robotics, praising even his first fumbling attempts at building machines from scratch and boasting to everyone who would listen about how they were seeing the future of the company in the making.

And, so early on in his life that Equius couldn't remember ever not knowing them, he made sure to teach him the two most important lessons of his life.

The first was that they were _old_ money. That there may be people who were richer, but that hardly mattered; they were better by far than any Gates, or Jobs, or, God forbid, _Rowling_. The nouveau-riche may have shown that they were capable of _making_ a fortune, but they were at least a century away from proving that their family was any good at _keeping_ it. Their own family company might focus primarily on electronics like so many of the upstarts, but that was only because they'd always preferred to continue actively accumulating wealth instead of letting interest from the bank do it for them. They weren't like the people whose entire livelihoods were built on societies latest trend.

And the other lesson which he was told always to remember was that other people of their station didn't want to see their family as being at the same level as them. "It doesn't matter that we can trace our family back just as far as they can, or that the Zahhak family was known for its wealth when many of their own forefathers were still nothing more than peasants," he'd say, always sounding disgusted with the entire thing. "They think that Europe is the only place which counts when they consider the past, that Iran is somehow less than England, or Germany, or France."

That was why _they_ had to be better than any of their peers, he taught Equius, to act with class and dignity at all times so the world would have no choice but to recognize their worth. Long before Equius even understood the types of vices being referred to his father stressed to him that he must not fall into the same bad habits that would ensnare so many other children who grew up with wealth.

He took those words to heart, and lived his life by them. He was always near the top of his class in school, joined the right clubs, got into the right university. He made sure to fill his social calendar with only people who held power or their children, although he couldn't say that he was actually _friends_ with many of them, but would quietly cut them from his life if their lifestyle became wild enough for it to be obvious they were on a downward spiral.

In short, he was the model heir to his family's legacy. The only obvious thing which might be considered a shortcoming was a close attachment that nothing could convince him to break to his cousin Nepeta, and even that was acceptable since she _was_ family even if she was an overly eccentric member of it. There was even always the possibility that he might rub off on her a little... or at least convince her to stop wearing cat ears everywhere she went.

So when his father died a year before Equius achieved his bachelor's degree everyone agreed that in spite of his young age the company was passing into safe hands, especially when he was wise enough to allow one of his father's most trusted executives to run it while he finished his schooling instead of shaking up the company in a fit of immediately trying to put his mark on it.

Yes, in spite of his inauspicious beginnings he grew up to become exactly the type of son his father must have hoped for. It wasn't until much later, when a new superheroine began putting her mark of the city he lived in, that he finally started to slip from the ideal.


	3. The First Tick of the Clock

Aradia never felt as if she'd made a decision to become a hero, not really. It wasn't as if she looked at her new powers, looked at the state of the world, and then said to herself, "I should use this power to make a difference."

It just seemed like the obvious thing to do with them, no thinking necessary. She'd tried to save her mother, and she couldn't. Some time later, after she'd really started to process what had happened to her, she tried to save her father and couldn't do that either; she found herself standing beside the road where his accident had happened at the exact same time that the earthquake was happening thousands of miles to the south. If she couldn't bring back the two people she most wanted to save, well, she might as well help others instead.

Besides, she couldn't very well keep hiding in Sollux's bedroom forever the way she did for the first few days. Oh, he probably would have let her if she'd really wanted to, at least for a good long while, and there wasn't much danger of her being found there since his parents were both unnerved by the complex computer systems he'd built up and avoided going into his room, but she'd never been the type of person who could happily roost in one small area for days on end.

Especially not after the news report they watched together two days after she arrived. She wasn't that surprised to see that her mother's death made the local news--respected members of their community who died in unusual circumstances usually got at least a quick mention--but she hadn't expected to see her own school picture show up on screen while the anchor prattled on about how Dr. Megido's daughter had gone missing and how if anyone heard anything from her they should contact the police at once so they could help bring her home.

Of course she realized once it happened that it made sense that they would talk about her, after all she was a missing child from their city even if the place she'd gone missing from was thousands of miles away, but she wished that they hadn't. She'd told Sollux about her mother's death but just let him assume that she'd gotten back some normal way then run off before anyone could try dumping her in foster care. That reasoning wouldn't hold water anymore now that he'd learned that she'd just gone missing from the dig site, especially when he had all the information he needed to realize that she'd somehow gone missing _after_ she'd shown up in his room.

She glanced at Sollux out of the corner of her eye and found that he was already looking back at her. "I'm not gonna ask about it if you don't want--" he started, but she quickly cut him off.

"Good," she said shortly, then immediately regretted her tone when she knew he'd only blame himself for upsetting her and rushed to make up for it. "I'm sorry, Sollux. I promise one day I'll tell you everything that happened, but I... I can't..."

She couldn't do it while the pain of her mother's death was still so fresh that she needed to try her best to avoid thinking about it or she'd start to feel like she needed to throw up everywhere from her body trying to find a way to expel the hurt. She couldn't do it while she still had no idea what had really happened to her, or where the music in her mind had come from or how it could make time dance to its beat. And she _definitely_ couldn't until she found a way to say 'I might be some type of zombie' without sounding completely insane.

Thinking about it must have written her heartache all over her face again, as she knew it had been as often as not in those early days, because instead of getting upset or trying to push the issue further he said, "Shit, AA, don't look at a guy like that. Listen, why don't you try getting a couple winks, empty your head out until tomorrow?"

Aradia didn't really think that she was tired, or rather she _knew_ that she felt bone-weary but she'd been feeling that way ever since the earthquake regardless of whether she actually needed rest or not and thought it was nothing more than that. Still, she recognized an out when she was given one and was glad to take it. "I think I will," she said, crawling up into his bed and snuggling down under the covers. "Thank you, Sollux."

"It's nothing," he said, waving off her appreciation. He flipped off the TV and the lights, leaving nothing that could possibly disturb her but the dim glow of his computer and, a moment later, the comfortingly familiar sound of his fingers moving over his keyboard. "You know I've got your back, AA."

* * *

Surprisingly, the morning after that Sollux was the one who first put the idea of heroism into her mind. The first thing he said when she began to wake up was, "You know how lucky you are people started getting born with weird powers?"

"Uh?" she grunted, still more asleep than not and completely unable to grasp what he could mean by the apparent non sequitur. She rolled onto her side and cracked open her eyes to look at him where he was sitting at the computer. She wasn't sure if he'd ever left it during the night; if he'd joined her in his bed at some point he'd managed to do it and then get up again without disturbing her.

"I've been looking shit up for you," he told her, leaning sideways so she could see his monitor though the text filling it was so small that there was no way she could have made it out from the bed. "I figure if you're crashing here it's because you want to hide out for some reason, right?"

"I guess," she said, dragging herself up so she could lean over his shoulder and see what in the world they were discussing. It wasn't much help; the internet browser he had open was displaying what looked like the verdict from some lawsuit. "I haven't really thought about it. I just don't want to be sent off to live with some family member I've never even heard of, or to be bounced around foster families, or whatever will happen to me if the people looking for me find me."

"Then you're lucky superheroes aren't just a thing in comics anymore," he said, looping back to the confusing subject he'd used to start the whole confusing conversation before finally actually clarifying it, "Look, you know all the crazy shit that's started happening since they showed up? People getting yanked into alternate dimensions, or called off into space, or being brainwashed into thinking they're someone else? There's all this precedent now; long as you stay out of sight nobody'll be _touching_ your stuff until you've been gone long enough to declare you dead. They're not gonna risk the kind of bad press it'd get if it turned out you were some kind of hero off saving the world and you cared more about your ma's house than your secret identity."

She giggled and flexed her arm at him. The muscles in it were perhaps a little more developed than those of most girls her age--the whole summer she'd been the one asked to cart off wheelbarrows once they were full of dirt and rocks since there was nothing else she was trusted to do, and that had had an effect on her--but it was still far from a fighter's body. "Right, Sollux, I'm sure they'll look at my school picture and think I'm off fighting evil."

"Shit, who could tell? You might have all kinds of crazy powers. That witch girl out east is scrawnier than you, and she blew up a gate that opened up to hell a couple weeks back." He paused a moment, then added, "Guess you wouldn't know about that."

"I might have powers..." she repeated slowly, and for the first time since she'd arrived in Sollux's room she heard the music again, just two low sweet notes that felt somehow questioning. Sollux was looking at her again the same way he had the night before and she knew that he had to be wondering again about how she had gotten there so quickly, but this time he didn't try to ask for an explanation.

Which was good, since she still didn't feel like offering one.

Instead she focused on what he'd been saying before that. "You're sure people will really just stay away?"

"Come on, AA, I might be fucking awful at a lot of things but you know I can get whatever I want out of a computer," he said, rolling his eyes at her. "Don't be an idiot and try living at home or you'll get spotted in two seconds, but if you wanna spend five years hiding under my bed you can move right back home when it's over."

"I'm not going to ask you to put up with me _that_ long! But if I really don't need to worry about anyone digging around in our things, there _is_ somewhere else..."

* * *

Almost nobody knew that her family owned forty acres of forest outside of the city. Her great-great-grandfather had loved to hunt and set his heart on having his own private hunting grounds. He'd saved up every spare cent he could get, buying up the land in hunks whenever he had enough for another parcel and never stopping until he was too old to go on working. Everyone who'd been alive to know about the old man's obsession had long since died, and apart from the occasional developer who dug up the information because they wanted to buy it to build a mall or movie theater the fact that it was owned by anyone in particular had been more or less forgotten.

And _nobody_ outside of her family--which now meant nobody besides herself and her grandmother if her ravaged mind still held the information--knew about the hunting lodge hidden in the heart of the forest. Her great-great-grandfather had built it in a time before building permits had been much of a thing, and though there'd been a few improvements since then, mostly adding indoor-plumbing and wiring it for electricity with the help of a private generator, all the work had been kept in the family as much as possible.

Aradia was _pretty_ sure that was just because they saw it as a fun family project and not a sign that her dad had come from a line of crazy antiauthoritarian survivalists, but whatever the case she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And if any record of it _did_ exist anywhere, well, one of the great things about having an incredible hacker for a best friend was that sometimes records could just mysteriously vanish.

She took Sollux with her when she first went out to the lodge, wanting him to know how to find her if he needed to, and with her permission he brought his girlfriend Feferi too. He said it was because he didn't really trust his brain to remember the way through the forest on its own, but they both knew Feferi had a bad enough sense of direction that the truth must be he just didn't want to keep Aradia's presence a secret from her.

They took a bus out to the suburbs as far as it would go, Aradia disguising herself by binding up her hair, putting on a pair of thick-rimmed drugstore reading glasses Sollux had bought her, and feeling grateful that a summer near the equator had left her skin much darker than it had been in the picture they kept flashing on the news. Apparently it worked, since even though they were making something of a scene the entire way out--Feferi clinging to her arm most of the ride and occasionally whispering to her low enough that nobody else could hear how happy she was to find out Aradia was okay--not a single person even gave her a second look.

Once the bus had taken them as far as it could they had to switch to walking, a trek that lasted miles before they even reached the edge of the forest. Sollux had the most trouble with it; Aradia had been hiking everywhere all summer and Feferi was the champion of their school's swim team with the muscles to prove it, but the only regular exercise he got was walking his family's dog. Even though they kept up a slow pace he was obviously winded and trying to hide it by the time they reached the edge of the forest, so Aradia let him sit down with Feferi to take a break while she looked for the spot where they'd be going in.

"Fuck, AA, you didn't say it would be this far," he said as he watched her looking around for the landmarks she needed to orientate herself by.

"Yes I did!" she told him, spotting the lightning-struck tree that was the clearest marker for the start of the path they'd be taking. They were a few dozen yards off, but she'd been prepared to need to search a lot further than that. "If anything I _over_ -estimated how far it would be. You can't blame me if you don't know how long a mile takes on foot."

"She's right," Feferi added, "she _did_ say how far we'd be going."

"Why the hell do I spend so much time around unsympathetic women?" he groused.

Feferi laughed and hugged his arm, "Because you like us best, of course!"

"Of course." Sollux pushed himself to his feet and jogged over to where Aradia was poking around some blackberry bushes, their fruit long since dried out. "All right, I got my breath back. Let's get this shit done."

"We need to go around these brambles," she said, carefully lifting one of the thorny limbs. "They've spread out since the last time we came here. The path starts right behind them."

"Great, looks like I'll end up bleeding for you today too," he said, but plowed gamely through the underbrush without hesitation. Aradia and Feferi followed behind a little more slowly, each of them holding branches and vines out of the other's way until they pushed through to where the trees became thick enough to steal the sunlight from anything trying to grow beneath. When they joined Sollux he was frowning at Aradia, though he looked more confused than upset. "You sure you picked the right spot, AA? There's no fucking path here."

She smiled brightly and darted forward with quick dancing steps. "Of course there is. Keep looking."

They followed her without question even though she was sure that neither of them had managed to spot the faint trail she was keeping a careful eye on. After a few minutes Sollux said, "Wait, I think I think I see it."

"Really?" Feferi asked, squinting at the woods in front of them. "I still only sea trees."

"Yeah but, no offense FF, you suck at finding your way around anywhere that isn't the beach." He held up and hand and waved it through the air, describing the curve of the path with its motion. "That it, AA?"

"Mm-hm. Good job! The first time I ever came out here it took me a lot longer to find it... though _I_ was four."

"Hate to be the one to break this to you, but that's not a fucking path. It's barely even a _groove_. You can't get smug about us not seeing it."

"I wasn't smug! Mom and Dad did the same thing to me when I was little." Just for a moment, on mentioning her parents, Aradia's smile and her steps both faltered, but she swallowed back her sorrow and kept on. "This is the only track to the lodge, my great-great-grandpa made it by riding his horse through and we've all kept from totally disappearing by walking over it ever since; if you went in anywhere but right between that dead tree and the blackberry bushes you'd just need to keep wandering until you either found the house on your own or wandered out of it again." After a moment's thought she added, "But it _is_ a lot more faded than it was the last time I came. We haven't been here since before the car accident, and I guess things must grow over it faster than I would have thought. So you did do good spotting it!"

The steaming hot days of late summer weren't the best time in the world to go tramping through the woods, although at least the trees provided them with shade that they hadn't gotten in the suburbs and Aradia was much better off than the others since she was still accustomed to the temperatures further south. Even worse than the heat were the mosquitos which were out in force; out on regular roads they'd been much scarcer, but under the trees it seemed like they were getting bitten every few minutes.

But the trip to the building was shorter than the walk from the bus stop to the woods had been, and it wasn't that much longer before they reached it. "Um, so I guess this will be my new home," she said, gesturing to it. It wasn't much to look at, not even painted, but she knew that it had a kitchen and a bathroom and a few beds and she didn't need anything else.

Whatever her own thoughts on it, Sollux and Feferi didn't look especially thrilled with it. "AA..." Sollux said, frowning at her, "You know, the spot under my bed's still open if you want it."

"Or you _could_ not try to hide," Feferi added hesitantly. "I know you don't want to be sent to live with someone you don't know, but do you really think you'll be able to live alone for five years? How are you going to get money to eat?"

"I've already thought about that. I can sneak back home and find things to sell online to get grocery money. You could make me an account on eBay or somewhere that couldn't be traced back to me, couldn't you Sollux?" She waited for his nod before going on, "And there's enough of a yard for me to make a vegetable garden for next year, that would help. Then once I've settled in there's something else I think I might do..."

She paused, gathering her courage so she'd be prepared to discuss the things she knew they'd want to know. When she saw herself appear behind them she knew that she was ready, and an instant later she reached into her mind to start the music playing and pushed herself a moment backwards.

"I know you wanted to know how I got to your home so fast, Sollux," she said to their backs, making them both jump and whirl to face her, Sollux yelping and Feferi's eyes wide. "I might be ready to tell you."

It took a minute for them to collect themselves enough to talk, but when Sollux finally did his reaction wasn't what she was expecting.

"You mean we walked all that way when we could have just teleported? Shit, AA, give us a break next time."


	4. You Can't Go Home Again

Sollux had warned her against staying in the home she'd grown up in as if she would want to, as if she'd need his warning to keep her away. He was wrong.

It had been hard enough when her father was the only one dead. Every inch of every room was covered in memories of him, ready to catch her up at the wrong moment and make the still barely healed places inside of her crack right back open. Even the smallest things could do it without warning; there'd been a moment not long before leaving for the dig where just filling up a piece of paper had made her sit down and cry, because it was the _last_ page in a memo book that he'd bought for taking down phone messages and that meant they'd need to replace something that he'd picked out with something he'd never even have a chance to see. But her mother being there and going through the same thing, maybe even worse, made it easier to handle and those moments did come less often as time went by.

Going through that all over again when she still wasn't completely over the first time, alone this time, would have just been too much. The lodge, she hoped, would be much easier. It wasn't a place where they'd _lived_ , just somewhere that they'd visit from time to time. She had happy memories from there but they were specific moments that stood out in her mind. They weren't hooked all over everything, everywhere. She could stand it there.

Yet that very evening she was back in her family home anyway, because if she was going to make her plan work there were things that she needed. Things she could keep, and things she could sell. She wouldn't be able to last long without money, and trying to access her mother's bank account would be a big glaring sign to anyone looking for her that she was somewhere in the city.

Sollux and Feferi both offered to come with her. She wished that she could have accepted that offer, but she knew that she couldn't. They probably knew that it wasn't possible too even as they made it; they couldn't just walk through the front door, and if there was some way for her to teleport other people around she didn't know how. She didn't even understand how she was doing it to herself, it was more some instinct that it made no sense for her to have than anything else that let her drift along on a long sweet note that left her wherever and whenever she wanted to be.

Which was how that night she ended up standing in her own kitchen earlier in the day, trying to hold herself together just long enough to do what she needed to.

The first thing she noticed was that the house didn't smell lived-in anymore. It was such a little thing, one that she never even would have thought of if she'd noticed it at all had she and her mother had just come back at the beginning of autumn the way they'd planned to--of course the air would smell stale and dusty when the house had been sitting empty for almost three months, it just meant they needed to open up all the windows for awhile--but now it was a glaring reminder that everything was different.

She moved fast, trying to do everything so quickly that she wouldn't have time to stop and focus on that emptiness. She had two large gamebags that she'd found among the decrepit hunting equipment left behind in the supply shed at the lodge, and would fill them as much as she could.

Food was the first priority. They'd emptied out the fridge and used up or gotten rid of any other perishables before leaving home, but there were still plenty of cans on the shelves, and spices and baking supplies and things like that. It would make for some strange meals for awhile, but at least she'd have enough to keep herself from going hungry until she was ready to try shopping without letting anyone recognize her.

She knew that she needed more kitchenware than the couple old rusty pans and dull knives that were at the cabin, but she hesitated when she started choosing what she'd bring, a milk knife in one hand and a meat knife in the other.

Her mother had always brought everything she'd need to make and serve all their meals whenever they spent a few days there, and she'd spend the whole first afternoon scrubbing and soaking and boiling everything the kitchen even though she knew there was no longer anyone else who used it. Her mother, and as a result Aradia, had been lapsed in many ways--the fact that she'd married a gentile alone made that obvious--but keeping a kashrut kitchen was one of the things she'd carried with her ever since her Orthodox childhood.

Aradia had never asked why it was one of the things she'd kept when she'd pushed aside rituals which were much less work. Now she'd never know.

She could keep it up. She always had before, carefully making sure to follow the rules her mother taught her whenever she made herself a snack or packed her own lunch. She'd never even considered stopping.

But that was before. Everything was different now; she had died and been reborn on some forgotten god's altar, and though she didn't know who or what had claimed her soul she doubted that it was her mother's God.

Ignoring the way her hands trembled she threw the two knives into a bag together, letting their blades clank against each other then adding other utensils and a few small pots and pan on tops of them. The bag she was using for them was heavy and overfilled by the time she was done, but that was fine. She'd only need to hold everything in place for a moment to get back to the cabin.

Besides that there wasn't much that she needed immediately. She dug a suitcase out of a closet and stuffed it with clothes. She hunted down every flashlight and candle she could find along with an oil lamp they'd bought during a long power outage years before because she knew that she'd only be able to run the generator for a few hours a day to keep the refrigerator cold; even when she'd been there with her parents they'd go without power for most of the day because keeping it fueled was expensive, and _they'd_ had jobs and savings to pay for things.

Her money would be coming from her mother's jewelry box, the last thing she took during that trip. She could come back for other things later, but it felt like that would be fastest place to start and the easiest things to ship out. She knew that most of it probably wasn't worth much, but there were a few old pieces that had been passed down in the family for at least a couple of generations that she hoped would turn out to be valuable. As long as she could sell anything at all it would be a start, and Sollux had promised that he'd help her increase those funds.

She felt a little guilty that she'd be selling off pieces of family history, but couldn't feel that bad about it; if it was what she needed to do to start off the second life she'd been given on a good foot she was sure her mother would have forgiven her.

She didn't expect what she found sitting on a little china plate in front of the jewelry box, although she should have. Her mother never took her wedding ring with her when she went on digs, too afraid of losing it, so of course it would still be there. It still managed to catch Aradia by surprise, dragging an unconscious whimper out of her throat when she saw it lying beside her father's own ring on the chain her mother had used to wear it since his death.

They were something precious. Something that had been important to both of her parents that she could keep with her, and she hadn't even thought of them. She picked up her mother's and slid it on her finger but found that it was still too big for her to wear, sliding right back off over her knuckle the moment she lowered her hand, but that was okay. Her mother's and father's rings deserved to be together.

She slipped it onto the chain and closed it around her neck, the feel of the two rings bumping against her breastbone comforting even though the gold was cold after months without being worn.

It had been hard coming back to the empty house on her own, but the rings alone were enough to make her glad that she hadn't put it off. They'd be a way for her to hold her parents beside her heart always, just like her mother had done when it was only her dad's ring on the chain.

There was a lump in her throat when she collected the bags she'd filled and returned to the cabin, but there was also a tiny place inside of her that felt just the slightest bit better.

* * *

Only one piece of jewelry turned out to be worth much, a necklace that Aradia was pretty sure had been a wedding gift to her grandmother. Many of the others didn't even meet the reserve prices she'd put on them at Feferi's recommendation, numbers chosen not based on any type of market research but on sentimental value.

But it didn't matter that she hadn't made as much from that as she'd hoped, because with Sollux at her side and time at her command her funds very rapidly expanded.

She knew that online gambling wasn't _really_ the most heroic way to start financing her eventual career. Gambling with the help of a top-level hacker who could make her multiple false identities so nobody would start wondering over how often one person was putting money on the right choices for everything from football games to realty TV eliminations was even shadier. And gambling by finding out the results then traveling back in time to place the bet was outright terrible behavior for someone who was entertaining plans for heroism.

But it was easy for her to justify it to herself. One day she'd be able to save lives with the power she'd been given. One day she'd make what had happened be less of a terrible, pointless tragedy; she'd go out every single night and do so much good that eventually she'd be able to look at the world and honestly say that even if she could go back and stop that earthquake she wouldn't, because undoing every rescue she'd made over the years would be too terrible and selfish to live with. And if that was going to happen then she needed money to keep herself fed. And to get herself trained, which burned through her money faster than anything.

It was surprisingly easy to find a fighting instructor who would let her sign up for classes without trying to talk to her parents first when she came in with enough cash to cover the first few months of lessons in her pocket. In fact, it was surprisingly easy to find four of them, and a gym for building up her muscles on top of it. She ended up in classes for boxing and capoeira, judo and one that was just general self-defense, absolutely ignorant about which might end up being useful in a real fight against someone honestly trying to harm her but just signing up with anyone who would let her in without too many questions.

To her teachers, and to anyone else she needed to come into contact with, she was Feferi. It was shocking how easily people bought the lie; even with the old school ID Feferi had given her to use any time she needed identification Aradia was constantly nervous that someone would recognize her from the news reports featuring her face but it never happened. As long as she wore her fake glasses they'd glance at the ID picture then never question that it was her, just seeing the masses of thick black hair and the thick-rimmed lenses that they shared. If it said she was Feferi Peixes, than she was.

And they were soon glad to have her, because in their eyes Feferi Peixes was a protégé.

Her body wasn't the only thing she spent that time training. She stretched out her new power as well, trying to feel out a limit to it that she was never able to find and killing two birds with one stone by using her martial arts training to do so. She relived the nights between lessons again and again, sometimes dozens of times until her yard was crowded with hers from different points in the loop, practicing and sleeping and practicing some more until she'd perfected whatever she learned in her last class before the next.

She flew through the early lessons dedicated to laying the groundwork for more advanced forms, forcing her way to higher-level lessons at a rate that must have seemed absurd to everyone watching from the outside without any idea how she was managing it. Three of her teachers--two at her own suggestion after the first came up with the idea--gave up on having her in their standard classes all together, working out a schedule for private lessons at a higher monthly cost; fine by her when all she needed to do to cover the new prices was find a day when she could place a high bet on low odds and win.

When her judo sensei started talking about competitions she thought that maybe she was ready for a real fight.

But there was one thing she needed to do before she could really start planning out her entrance to the crime-fighting scene. Every time she'd used her new power she'd stuck to neat loops through time. She couldn't change her mother's death, and why would she bother changing anything about her nights spent training? Even if she stubbed her toe or accidentally whacked her arm into a tree in the middle of practicing it would be silly to save herself from such a little pain. It was more or less guaranteed that one day, and likely many times, she'd experience worse in the middle of a fight, and it would be better to suck it up and build up her pain tolerance while she had a chance instead of constantly wasting energy saving herself from minor injuries.

So she didn't even know if she could change things, or if somehow the world would force her make sure the timeline went the way it was originally supposed to. She thought, or at least she hoped, that she didn't need to worry about destroying the universe by creating a time paradox the way Sollux occasionally rambled at her about--if the universe was _that_ delicate the people who'd originally made the altar would have ended it long ago, because what were the chances that not a single one of them would have tried to make a change?--but that was the only assumption she felt safe making.

She decided to go with an incredibly simple test, one that she could easily do right from her own yard. When she got home from her self-defense class one evening, just as dusk was starting to fall, she found a small rock on the forest floor and tossed it towards the cabin. She watched it crack off the door and drop down to the faint path in front of it, carefully noting the exact spot that it fell; if she couldn't change things than it would somehow end up there again when she tried. Then she went back.

A moment before the rock would have hit the ground, Aradia knelt down and dug around on the mulchy forest floor until she found a small rock. She straightened up and drew back her arm to throw it, only to have her wrist grabbed before she had a chance. She turned to see herself watching with a grin as the rock fell out of her fingers and back to the ground near where she'd found it.

"We just need to wait a second," the other her said, releasing her arm and walking over to the path in front of her cabin. "If it doesn't somehow end up right _here_ , we can do this!"

There was a sudden loud cracking noise that they both whipped around to face, the other Aradia looking even more startled than she felt. Before they even had a chance to understand what was happening one of the trees around the edge of the clearing the cabin was built in fell. It slammed into the head of the other Aradia, felling her instantly.

Aradia screamed, staring at the place where her skull was shattered open just as it had been once, months before and thousands of miles away. Then she caught herself, realizing, and sent herself rushing back to a few seconds before. She barely noticed that the music was screechier than normal.

"If it doesn't somehow end up right _here_ , we can do this!" the other her said, stopping at a spot on the path as Aradia watched. There was a sudden loud cracking noise that they both whipped around to face, the other Aradia looking even more startled than she felt, but before they could find its source a second other her was slamming into her double, knocking them both to the ground a few feet from where they'd been standing.

There was an incredibly strong gust of wind, the type her area normally only got during spring windstorms, and the tree she'd only just noticed was falling was pushed from the path it had been taking by its force. Instead of landing safely across the path it ended up smashing straight into the other two hers.

Aradia screamed, watching the blood pour out of a copy of her who had been impaled by the stump left by an old broken branch. It made her think of the way it had poured out on an altar once, months before and thousands of miles away. Then she caught herself, realizing, and prepared to send herself rushing back to a few seconds before, but the music that filled her mind was shrill and dissonant and the strangeness of it was enough to make her hesitate just long enough to come to a second realization.

She must have tried that once already, right? It was the only explanation for that unexpected third her's actions, pushing the second away from where the tree had almost landed. It hadn't helped.

But she _could_ change things, she knew she could. The rock was still sitting next to her foot, and she knew that the first other her had thrown it. Why would she be able to change that and not this?

Then her mind seemed to freeze with horror when an explanation hit her. What if it was like one of those stupid horror movies that came out every few years? What if the world had suddenly noticed that she'd somehow survived when she was meant to have died and was reaching out to correct that mistake? It wouldn't be any stranger than everything that had already happened to her, would it?

She started to shake as she stared up at the trees around her, any one of which could be the next to fall, then darted into her house before the way their upper branches swayed in the breeze could shake up her mind even worse. It wasn't something she'd ever thought of before, but she knew with sudden perfect clarity that no matter how much she wanted to see her parents again she didn't want it to happen like _that_. At least, not for a long, long time.

Later on she'd feel ashamed at herself for what she did next--what type of superhero could she be if she reacted to fear like a little kid?--but all she could find it in her to do then was crawl into bed and hide under her covers like a child afraid of the dark, absolutely terrified but not having any idea what she could do if death had come to take her. It was hours before she finally accepted that, no, that obviously wasn't happening if it hadn't yet, there had to be something else going on.

So she called Sollux with the pay-as-you-go cellphone the Feferi had gotten for her to use in emergencies just after she'd moved into the middle of nowhere.

Proving how much he deserved the title of her best friend, as he had so many times before, she'd barely said more than hello when he told her to sit tight because he was coming out there. She hadn't even given him a single detail about what had happened, he'd been able to tell just from the sound of her voice that it was bad enough that she needed someone else around. Which was a good thing, because the phone dropped its signal constantly in the woods and it would be tough to tell the story if she had to keep recalling.

She checked out the bodies while she waited for him to come, being very careful to think of them that way and not as _her_ bodies. As long as she avoided looking at their faces she could almost make herself believe they were two strangers, a terrible scene to come across but one she could remain mostly detached from.

She knelt down beside them to check pulses even though she knew it was pointless, if either of them had lived they would have tried dragging themselves out from under the tree or at least shouting for her before then, but she had to be sure. Her jeans ended up soaked with blood from knees to ankle because in the dark she couldn't tell that she was dropping straight into the pool of it. It was cold and sticky after sitting out for so long, and a moment after feeling it reach her skin she had to throw herself to the side to vomit into a bush.

At least it meant she was less likely to throw up the first time she was a little late to a crime scene before she went back further.

She kept waiting by the bodies after her stomach settled, dragging out a lawn chair so she could sit down a few feet away, so they wouldn't be the first thing Sollux saw when he got there. Even though she knew he was coming she was surprised when she heard the sound of an engine drifting through the trees, even more so when she saw a headlight heading towards the cabin. She absolutely hadn't expected the minibike that crawled slowly into the clearing.

As soon as it stopped Sollux threw off the helmet he was wearing and said, "This better be as important as it sounded, AA. Because the bus stopped running for the night now I owe fucking Ampora a favor for lending me his bike to get out here."

Even with all events of that night, the idea that Eridan Ampora would willingly lend Sollux a single thing he owned was bizarre enough that the first thing out of her mouth ended up being, "How did you talk him into that?"

He hunched his shoulders and admitted, "All right, he actually loaned it to FF and she brought it to me. But the asshole's finding out the truth when I bring it back. I'm not letting him try to get anything out of her for payback." He started walking towards her then for an instant froze, his eyes fixed on the bloody legs of her jeans, before darting forward to grab her and try to make out any wounds. " _Shit_ , Aradia, what's happened to you now?"

"It's not mine," she said, only to correct herself when she remembered that she was wrong. "I mean, it is, but it's not _mine_. It's theirs'." She gestured towards the two bodies, and watched the blood drain out of his face so quickly that even in the darkness she could see it happen.

As he stared at them she told the story, though as she spoke she realized that for all the distress it had caused her it really wasn't much of one. She tried to throw a rock, she stopped herself, then a minute later two of her were suddenly dead. He listened quietly, his hand still clutching her shoulders, as she went over how she knew she must have tried to stop it once and the way it hadn't helped.

And when she was done he said in a thoughtful tone, like he was still working it out in his head himself, "Okay. Yeah. I guess that makes sense."

It was her turn to do the staring. How did could he make sense of it in minutes when she still didn't understand it hours later? " _What_ makes sense?" she asked.

"Those two changed the world, right? The first one stopped the rock you were talking about from flying, the other moved her away from where she was supposed to be?" he waited until she nodded then went on, "But after that _those two_ were from a world that didn't exist anymore. The one where you tossed a rock, or just watched one of them get crushed. It's like coding, you know? If I'm working on a program and realize that it's a shitty piece of crap because I screwed up somewhere I can't just throw in the code that makes it work the way I want, I've got to get rid of the part that was fucking things up. You wanna change the programming of the universe, it's gonna clean up what's left of the old version."

Although Aradia didn't understand half the things he did with computers, she was able to follow along with his logic. "That means, if I want to use my power to make things better..." she started slowly, before trailing off.

"...You'd better get used to seeing dead Aradias," he finished for her, and she could tell by the waver she heard in his voice that he found the idea just as upsetting as she did though he was trying to hide it. He let go of her finally, laughed shakily, and added, "Shit, at least you didn't blow up the universe after all. That's something."

She looked at the two bodies, apparently the first of many if she really went through with her plan, and said, "God, what am I going to do with them?"

"You know I'll help you dig graves if you want, AA," he said, though he sounded freaked out at the idea. "Or you could, I don't know, with the way you can zoom around now you could scare the shit out of the next people to climb Everest by leaving them at the top, or dump them in the ocean, or toss them in a desert somewhere. Lots of empty places in the world."

She knelt beside the bodies again, this time just bouncing on her toes to avoid sitting in the blood, and reached out to touch their hands as she thought it over. The first quiet notes of music began in her mind as she said, "The ocean sounds good. Mama never got to be properly buried, so... I don't know, it just doesn't feel right for me to be."

And then she was away.

* * *

She was wrong, as it turned out. A little over a week later her phone woke her up with the cheerful jingle of Sollux's ringtone first thing in the morning, not long after all of her other selves of the night vanished back to continue their parts in the long loop of training.

Somewhere in her unconscious she must have been aware that Sollux would only call her if it were an emergency because she was awake almost immediately, her heart pounding as she fumbled for the phone on her bedside table. She hardly even had time to say 'hello' before Sollux was talking in such a rush that his lisp slurred the words worse than usual. The phone's signal, never fabulous in the woods to begin with, was at its worst inside the cabin so his voice cackled and faded in-and-out of audibility, but it wasn't enough to keep her from making out the gist of his words.

What remained of her mother's body had been recovered. It was being shipped home for burial.

It was the first time since deciding to go into hiding that Aradia felt a strong urge to give up on the whole thing. It was her _mother's funeral_. How could she leave it in the hands of other people who wouldn't even be family, people who might not know what she wanted? She _thought_ that her mother had written a will after her father's death, but would whoever took care of her pay attention to whatever was written in it?

She only held herself back from immediately ruining all her plans by reminding herself that there wasn't much anyone could screw up. Her mother would want a simple, traditional, funeral, and she'd already bought the burial plot beside Aradia's father. Her side of the gravemarker they'd share was even already filled out, neat Hebrew letters beside the English of her father's inscription, only the date of her death left blank.

...No, not even that anymore.

But even if she could bring herself to keep out of planning the burial, there was no chance at all that she could stay away from the funeral. It was okay if she had to stay hidden, but not being there at all would just be too horrible. And it was absolutely worth the risk that she might be seen.

Luckily the funeral was outdoors, which made it easier; she didn't need to find a way to sneak indoors, she just needed to pick a good bush to crouch behind.

Sollux couldn't be there with her, though she wanted him. Everyone who knew them at all knew that they were best friends, and if anyone saw him hovering at the edges of the funeral they'd definitely take a hard look at a girl with long dark hair sitting beside him. Besides that his family would be expecting him to sit beside them, and it would look incredibly strange and callous if he tried to get out of it.

After all, even if nobody outright said the words because officially she was still only missing, to everyone outside of their small three-person circle it was unofficially her funeral as well. How could her best friend stay away from that?

But Feferi could be with her. Nobody would think anything of it if they didn't see her at the funeral; they hadn't really been _friends_ before everything that had happened. They'd spent a lot of time with each other during the last couple of months before Aradia had left for the dig, and gotten along perfectly well, but it was their relationships with Sollux that pulled them together. They'd never really just hung out on their own. Aradia would never even have picked Feferi as one of only people to know she was alive except that she'd known it would be easier for Sollux if he had someone else to talk to about their secret, and Feferi was _much_ less likely to give the whole thing away in a fit of angry pigheadedness than his next closest friend.

It was amazing what a difference having contact with barely anyone else could have on a relationship, especially when Feferi had been so unfailingly helpful and supportive. Sollux would still have been her first choice to have with her, but Feferi was almost as much of a comfort.

They got there a little late, waiting until Sollux sent them a text that people had stopped showing up so there'd be less risk of anyone stumbling across them on the way to the graveside. They'd picked a thick growth of bushes a good way from the site, much too far away to hear anything but close enough that they could see what was happening if they strained their eyes, deciding that any closer would just be too much of a risk.

Aradia was surprised at just how many had come. Many _many_ more than had been there for her father. She could pick out a few of her mother's colleagues--Anna was right near the front, crying on another woman's shoulder--and she guessed that some of the faces she didn't know were probably students from the college where her mother had taught anthropology classes when she wasn't working in the field, but there were a lot of people there from _her_ school too, both students and teachers. Even people that she couldn't remember ever saying a single word to.

She clenched Feferi's hand like her life depended on holding on as she looked over the group, trying to pick out everyone she recognized, but Feferi didn't make a single sound of complaint even when her grip got tight enough that it must have been painful. Instead after awhile she just said, softly, "I'm so sorry, Aradia. I don't think I ever said it before, but it's just because I didn't... I don't... I can't even _imagine_ what it's like for you, and I'm so, so, sorry."

"It's okay," Aradia said, and it was. Not that her mother was dead of course, that would never be okay, but she didn't mind that Feferi hadn't really said anything about it before. It wasn't as if anything she could say would help. One thing did occur to her, though. "But," she started, then hesitated briefly as she realized that maybe it wasn't any of her business before plowing ahead anyway, "your mom is gone too, isn't she?"

To her surprise Feferi laughed, then clasped her hands over her mouth with a guilty look on her face, her eyes darting towards the funeral that was still in progress. "I'm sorry. It was awful of me to laugh right now," she said once she'd regained her composure. "Mother isn't dead, we just don't really talk about her. She tries to keep people from remembering that she has a daughter she doesn't have custody of anyway; she's actually in congress, and I guess voters don't really like that." She ducked her head so her hair fell all around her face, but offered Aradia a small smile through the locks. "I should tell you the truth; when I let you have my ID I wasn't being _completely_ generous. I like thinking that maybe one day a reporter will look into us for something to use against her and spout a story about how I've turned into a crazy martial arts nut without a mother's influence. ...Not that I think you're crazy! That's just a lot of lessons for someone who can't sail through time."

Aradia might have been surprised when Feferi laughed, but she outright shocked herself when she followed suit even though her mother was being buried _right there_. "Don't worry, I know what I've been doing isn't very normal. But I need to do it."

"We know that! We know you'd be culled from the streets your first night out if you didn't do all this. We even get why it's so important to you, as much as we can anyway," Feferi said, then turned her attention back to the funeral.

Aradia followed her gaze, letting the conversation die. She didn't want to talk about it in more depth; what could she even say? That they might _know_ her reasons, but she didn't really think Feferi and Sollux could understand them? That wasn't a bad thing, she didn't want them to understand. The only way they could, after all, was if they also went through something so overwhelmingly horrible that they desperately wanted to make something--anything!--good come out of it. She wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not her closest friends.

It was too late to keep talking anyway. Her mother's coffin was being lowered into its plot, mourners either lining up to scoop a shovel full of dirt into the grave or preparing to disperse, and that meant that they needed to get out of there before anyone could get close enough to see them. But even knowing that Aradia hesitated to tell Feferi it was time to move, not feeling right about leaving just like that. It wasn't enough, just being close to the ceremony they couldn't even hear then skittering away without doing _anything_ she was supposed to in the name of mourning. Even if she'd decided to push aside her mother's religion, it wasn't really about God. It was about her mother, how much she loved and missed her, and she should do something right to show that.

She was already scrambling at her sleeve before she'd consciously thought through what she wanted to do, murmuring the blessing that so many other people must have said that day as she grabbed at it, but the fabric was too strong for her to rip just from tugging on it. Undeterred, she tugged a pinch of it up and craned her head sideways until she could drive her canine tooth through it, yanking her head to the side until she'd worked the hole just big enough to hook the tip of her finger through. That was all the start she needed to tear down until her shirt was ripped open from shoulder to elbow.

Then she turned to Feferi, who was fingering her own shirt like she wasn't sure if she should be following Aradia's example, and said something that went completely against any further proper display of mourning; "Tonight. I'm going out for the first time tonight."

* * *

That was simplifying things a little, of course. She actually spent the night wandering around her cabin, too keyed up to sleep but too distracted to do much of anything else. Even though she knew just from the fact that no other her had greeted her at the start of the night that she wouldn't be the one doing any type of fighting she couldn't rest. She kept going over everything she'd learned in the past few months in her head, checking over the costume she'd made for herself to make sure all the details were as perfect as she could get them, glancing over the city map she'd gotten even though she knew she could just move to wherever she wanted to be.

She tried not to think about the fact that she'd be dead very soon, and everything she was thinking over would be left for another her to worry about.

First thing in the morning she made her way to Sollux's house, stopping to pick up a copy of the morning newspaper on the way, and crawled in through his window the way she'd always used to. He was already awake and waiting for her, looking like he hadn't gotten any more sleep than she had though for him it could have just been his usual habit.

"Seriously, AA? A newspaper?" he asked when he saw what she was holding, giving it a decidedly unimpressed look.

"It has last night's police bulletins in it," she said defensively, shuffling through the sections until she found the right one and holding it up for him to see. It's not like I could just call them up and ask what happened, so this will let me know."

"After you dig through two pages of poor suckers who've lost their houses, and then it'll only be whatever they don't mind any old asshole finding out about right away. There're better ways," he said, not looking any more impressed by her logic. He was already sitting down his desk and spinning around to face his computer. "Shit, AA, it's like you forgot who you're friends with. Give me two minutes."

For a moment she tried watching his monitor, but she couldn't understand anything that was happening on it so she switched to her paper. He was right about the foreclosure notices, but it wasn't like that was the _only_ thing there. Like, the third notice down was about someone who was brought in for driving under the influence... which she couldn't really do anything about, unless she wandered around the cities bars around last call slashing tires with the rational that _anyone_ still there that early shouldn't be driving.

"Right," Sollux said a little while more than the two minutes he'd claimed later. "Got it. Here's all the shit that happened last night, AA. Take your pick." Then he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, the side of his mouth twitching up, and added, "Just don't ask how I did it; wouldn't want me to be the first one you bring in."

"Got it. I'll keep my questions to myself." She leaned over his shoulder, looking over terse descriptions of hours-old crimes. "This is all of them? I want to find something that doesn't look like it would be _too_ hard. Ease myself into it, you know?"

"So the murder on Clark is probably out?" he asked casually.

"The _what?_ "

He snorted and shook his head. "Joke, AA. Nothing that bad's going on out here." He slid his chair to the side so she could get a better look at the monitor, tapping at a few that seemed promising. "Got a few muggings you might be able to handle, a carjacking if you want something flashier... uh, you probably don't wanna try talking down the suicide, not really a problem you can punch your way through."

He was right about that, though she felt bad admitting it. She'd focused her training on being a good fighter, not a good therapist, and she wouldn't know the first place to start if she wanted to try convincing someone that life was worth living. She was already starting to feel guilty about turning her back on him, and was sure that it would only get worse when she went back and neglected to tell her past self about him, but at the same time she selfishly didn't want to try and risk having him kill himself faster because of whatever she said.

She skimmed down the list one more time, trying to find any detail that would let her believe that one victim was somehow more deserving than the others of her help to make the choice easier, but found nothing. Finally she just pushed the entire concept of 'worth' aside and focused on things she knew instead; one of the muggings happened in an area the she was familiar with, where she knew the layout well enough that she should have no difficulty sneaking up of the criminal. "This one," she said, touching it on the screen then quickly scribbling the address information and details of the crime down in the margin of her newspaper. "It's going to be this one."

She didn't wait for him to reply before sending herself looping back to the beginning of the night. There didn't seem a point to doing so, when in moments the entire conversation would never have happened to begin with and the knowledge of what had happened during it would die with her.

She found herself looking exactly as anxious as she'd felt all that past night. Her earlier self gasped so loudly that it was almost a quiet shout when she tapped her on the shoulder and just about tripped over her own feet as she whipped around to face her; not exactly a fabulous display of the improved sense of balance she'd managed to beat into herself over her weeks of training.

"We're really doing this?" that other her said, her eyes gleaming with excitement as she stared at the paper in Aradia's hand.

"We're making this happen," Aradia agreed, holding it out to her with the writing scibbled on it clearly visible. "But the newspaper wasn't really as much help as we thought it would be; Sollux helped me find the one we'll really be fixing. Remember that, okay?"

"All right." She read through the information then looked up at Aradia, biting down on her lip from worry. "Are you going to be okay with _your_ part?"

"As ready as you would be," Aradia said, managing a smile before sending herself to the sea before anything could happen to her within her own house.

While back in the cabin Aradia stood still staring where she'd been for a moment longer. She hoped, though she felt bad about it, that the doomed her had chosen to take herself out over the water instead of somewhere in the woods where she'd start to stink eventually. Worse, where she'd need to go out one day and find her own corpse rotting. Of course, since they were the same person and she was thinking that it was probably safe to assume her other self had too.

Then she turned her attention to the task at hand. She'd been working on her costume for weeks, cutting and sewing and throwing everything she'd finished away to start again until she had something that actually managed to fit her decently well even though she'd never been any kind of a seamstress. She made it all in red red red, the color of her blood spilling out over the altar, and on its chest she painted the symbol of the inexplicable gear that had been carved into the stone. Finally she pulled a cloak over it all, with a hood she clipped into place with bobby pins attached to loops sewn within. It cast her face into deep shadow so no one would be able to pick out her identity from inside its shade.

It was funny, but even though she'd been learning to fight for months and had her strange new abilities for longer she'd never truly felt _powerful_ until she stood there wrapped in the costume that the world would soon recognize as belonging to a hero and ready to go out and save a life.

Well, save a wallet and some jewelry, according to her alternate self's scribbled note. But it was a start. Saving lives would come from there.

For roughly two seconds after she moved herself to the crime scene everything went exactly as she'd always pictured it happening when she imagined her first night as a crimefighter. Whatever force controlled her teleporting was kind enough to place her directly behind the mugger, and she punched him before he even knew she was there.

But then her imagination proved traitorous; within it the bad guys were always knocked unconscious at the first blow, but that didn't happen at all. In the real world the thief staggered for a moment, but then he whipped around to confront her, pulling a knife out of his pocket and slashing out at her in the same move. The blade sliced into her arm just above the elbow, and for a split second she considered going back to stop it until she actually looked at it and realized that it really wasn't deep enough to be worth killing herself over.

Instead she resolved to go back to that moment the instant the fight was over, and sure enough immediately after she made that decision another copy of her appeared. The thief faltered in surprise at an identical copy of his assailant showing up out of nowhere, and both of her pressed in to take advantage of that before he had a chance to get over it. The job of taking him down was easier for two than it had been for one, and it only took a few minutes longer before he was out cold, his face already starting to bruise. She went back to become the her who joined the fight, leaving the rest of what needed to happen to herself a minute later.

Aradia tugged at her hood as she turned towards the couple she'd just saved, making sure that it as still in place. It was the first time that anyone who didn't know her would be in a position to get a good look at her if her disguise failed, assuming that the thief had been too surprised to try. But it was past the time for worry about that, she just needed to trust that Sollux, Feferi, and the mirror on her wall had been honest with her about her cloak working.

"Are you okay?" she asked the couple, trying to pitch her voice low the way heroes on TV always seemed to. Even if it didn't make her sound any more heroic, she hoped that maybe it at least made her sound older. "I suggest that one of you call the police."

"Y-you," one of the women sputtered, staring at her with wide eyes, "Who _are_ you?"

Aradia's mind froze at the question. Of all the stupid little things she could have overlooked while planning her start in heroism, how could her _name_ be one of them? But she'd never even thought about it, just worrying about making sure no one would be able to physically identify her without ever thinking that people would want something to call her.

She thought quickly, trying to come up with something that would work. Her powers were all about time. She moved through time, she controlled time, she was only alive because time had somehow claimed her. She was made of time...

She didn't even realize she was mumbling herself as she tried thinking this through until the other woman said "You're the Maid of Time? Well thank you, thank you so much!"

Aradia blinked at her, then smiled. It was kind of a silly name for a hero, but she was okay with that. What mattered was that she'd done something good, made people happy, and she'd be able to do that so many more times in the years to come. It was working, it was really, _really_ , working.

"You're welcome," she said to them both. "Stay safe! Hopefully you'll never need to see me again!"

She zoomed herself away before they had any more time to try making out her face, and collapsed onto her bed giggling and giddy. It had worked, it had worked, it had _worked_. She still felt the adrenaline rushing through her so strongly that she almost wanted to go out and find another crime to stop right away.

But she made herself stop, dig out her first aid kit, and bind up the cut on her arm while thinking over the way the fight had went. In movies and TV shows it never mattered if someone had a weapon, if they got into a fight with a martial artist they'd get their butt kicked. Hollywood had obviously been lying to her; the fact that he'd injured her was bad enough, but she knew that it was mostly just luck that she'd gotten away with nothing worse than a shallow slice. The man had been putting his strength behind the stab, she could tell that much, but because he'd been lashing out automatically instead of taking the time to aim his strike he'd only made a superficial wound.

She'd thought that she could rely on nothing more than barefisted fighting if she wanted to be a hero, but it was obvious to her now that she needed to learn to fight with some kind of weapon too. The only question was what kind; guns were right out, and knives felt too criminal too. A taser might be something more normal to carry around for self-defense, but it felt a little _too_ normal, like people might not really see her as a superhero if they saw her running around tasing criminals.

As she thought her eyes settled on the poster of Indiana Jones she had hanging over her bed, on the whip in his hand, and slowly she began to smile.


	5. Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

Equius first heard about the Maid of Time long before he took any interest in her.

At first it was nothing but rumors that he overheard being passed around the company or which were occasionally mentioned as a bit of fluff on the local news. Few people believed them when they first began spreading; there had never been a superhero in their city before unless one was just visiting to help clean up some disaster. It just wasn't the type of place that attracted them. It was too small and unimportant of a city to draw supervillains and too normal for many supernatural happenings, and heroes always seemed to flock to more menacing places. Equius assumed that was for the sake of publicity, although most people didn't want to hear a theory that implied the heroes of the world had intentions which were anything other than entirely altruistic.

Even when images of her caught by security cameras and the cellphones of the people that she rescued started trickling in they didn't take her seriously. Not until the first grainy video of her vanishing into thin air. The media exploded after that, doing their best to pretend that they hadn't treated her like something between a hoax and a joke until then as they gave a belated welcome to the city's first superhero.

But even then Equius paid little attention. He knew better than anyone that superhumans could be born even within their ordinary city. If one of them felt like dressing up in a costume and dashing about stopping street fights and carjackers it was her own concern. He had matters of his own to focus on, and as his company operated entirely within the rules of the law there was no reason for him to waste time thinking about a fledgling superheroine.

His life had become much busier ever since he'd finished business school and taken over Zahhak Enterprises in truth instead of in name alone. His father's executives soon learned that just because he'd left them to their own devices until he graduated it, it _didn't_ mean he intended to be a tractable and hands-off type of owner. He had plans for the company, and the beauty of a private family-owned business was that no one could keep him from going through with them.

His father's long-ago predictions that his interest in robotics would one day shape the future of the company were rapidly coming true. He'd stopped production of several of their less profitable devices and reworked those factories to create machines of his own devising. When he didn't need to be in meetings or keeping a close eye on his factories to fix any problems before they became a major issue he was locked in his workroom single-handedly designing new products.

In only a few short years Zahhak Enterprises was already becoming more well-known for being on the leading edge of the robotics field than it had ever been for their televisions and sound systems. Within it some of his creations were more profitable than others--little toys that danced or spoke or ran through exercise routines with their owners would likely always be most popular to the general population, but they were also the first name oceanographers turned to if they wanted the best underwater research devices as Equius' own immense strength gave him a unique advantage when it came to designing machines that could withstand incredible pressure--but all were well-regarded.

And so he was much too busy with work, and through it showing the world that he was entirely worthy of living up to his father's legacy, to concern himself with local gossip.

When he thought back on it later it was no real surprise that Nepeta was the one who changed all that. She had always been the one person who would convince him to take breaks if she thought he needed them, or to try new things or open his mind to new possibilities. Although this time did not start with her particularly trying to spark his interest, just with her feeding her own.

She was lying on the floor of his workroom as he put the final touches on his latest design, a familiar spot for her ever since he'd started spending so much time there; she'd learned that it was useless for her to try and make him spend _too_ much time away from it, so instead she would spend her evenings there with him so they could still have plenty of time together.

She was there later than usual that night, and the fact that she was watching the nightly news of her own free will might have told him that something unusual was happening if he'd been paying enough attention. He didn't even need to know her as well as he did to realize that there was something strange about that, it was obvious just from the way she paid more attention to a screw she'd stolen from one of the drawers of his worktable and was idly batting across the floor than she did to the TV screen that the news wasn't one of her interests.

That changed the instant one of the newscasters said, "And now for the latest on our very own local heroine, The Maid of Time!"

Nepeta shot up out of her usual catlike sprawl to sit leaning towards the screen, all but trembling with obvious excitement. She outright squealed when it was announced that the Maid of Time had been spotted just a few streets away from their building only twenty minutes before, shoving a man out of the way of a car that had almost hit him when its driver ran a red light. "Isn't she just the pawsomest thing in the whole world, Equius?" Nepeta asked, only dragging her eyes away from the screen for a split second to see if he looked appropriately enthralled. "She's even better than _ligers_ , and you know how great it is when a lion and a tiger manage to fall in love and have a cub against all odds!"

"I'm sure it is," Equius said drily. "You know that you shouldn't mangle words that way."

"Oh, phoo! There isn't anybody here but you, I'm not going to 'bring shame to the family' or any fur-brained ideas like that." She turned back to the TV, annoyance dropping off her face to make way for renewed wonder, and she added, "Anyway, she's totally worth getting silly over. You have to admit it, Equius!"

"I can't say that I'd know," Equius told her, attempting to return his attention to his work only for his words to be met with an outraged yowl. There was no other word for the sound.

"How can you not know?" Nepeta demanded, jumping up and standing on her tiptoes to get as close to being right in his face as she could. "She's a superhero, Equius, our very own superhero! You should be more purrleased than anybody, finding out that you aren't the only one living here who has supermeowers!"

"That _is_ meant to be a secret, Nepeta," Equius said, his tone more sharp than he'd usually get with her. Since his father's death she was the only one outside of his butler and the old tutors he'd had when he was learning to control his powers, assuming that they even remembered him, who knew of his secret strength, and he would prefer that not to change. It was doubtful that anyone else would be in his private floors of the company tower, everyone who worked there wise enough to stay away unless there was an incredibly urgent emergency that needed his immediate attention, but his workroom wasn't soundproofed and he'd prefer not to risk anyone else overhearing her. "And I hardly feel compelled to take an interest in every superpowered human in existence. It's good to know that the city is a safer place because of her, but I don't need to know anything more than that."

She stared at him silently, a disbelieving look on her face, for a long moment, then she turned and darted out of the room without another word. He barely had time to wonder if he should go after her and attempt to apologize for upsetting her when she reappeared and thrust a magazine in his face. According to the cover it was a one-year retrospective for the anniversary of the Maid's first known appearance, but it was so beat up and dog-eared that it looked like it should be older than the few months at most since its publication.

"You're going to sit here and read this _right now_ , Equius Zahhak!" Nepeta told him firmly, poking him in the chest for emphasis. "I'm not letting my very favorite cousin go around saying he doesn't know anything about the Maid of Time!"

Well, he supposed that if she was showing interest in anything that wasn't cat-related he really should encourage it. "Very well," he told her, taking the magazine and sitting down, trying to ignore the way Nepeta kept her eyes fixed on him like she planned to make absolutely _sure_ he paid proper attention instead of just flipping quickly through the magazine then tossing it aside.

Most of the magazine was dedicated to pictures of the Maid, picking out the choicest photos that people had managed to capture of her along with the occasional artists rendering of her more daring deeds when there had been no decent images available. Most of the articles were dedicated to theorizing about her, the ideas people came up with ranging from the somewhat plausible--that she was a visitor from the future, using her knowledge of things to come to make the city develop into a better place in her own time--to the downright odd--that the reason no one had ever managed to catch a glimpse of her face higher than her lips was because her cloak was made out of some living material that consciously kept itself low enough to hide her identity.

It would be a rather pathetic living fabric that could do all that yet couldn't make itself look like anything better than rather cheap cotton, Equius thought.

Truthfully it wasn't the Maid herself who first caught his eye. It was a fresh cut he spotted on her hand in one picture that was already nothing more than a healed scar in the next, although the dates in the captions were so close that there should have been some scabbing left. "It seems that your hero heals quickly," he told Nepeta absently, ignoring her curious 'Huh?' in reply as he began examining the pictures more closely.

Now that he was looking for signs, he realized that it wasn't only the cut that healed strangely quickly. The few dangling tendrils of her hair that could be seen under her hood seemed to be growing more quickly than normal as well, going from just chin-length to reaching her chest in only a couple of months before being cut down again. As he went over the pages one more time he started coming up with a theory of his own, one that he doubted any of her great fans even wanted to consider.

From that day on he went from paying no attention to her to catching every news story he could, looking for any signs her could find that his theory was correct. The more time went by the more sure of it he became, beyond the growth of her hair and the speed with which she healed injuries it was there in things like how quickly her costume became worn and was replaced, even accounting for the damage done to it in fights, or how fast the tan that could be seen on the small amount of her skin that was visible faded at the end of summer. It was a terrible truth, one that perhaps made her actions more honestly heroic than any other superhero's but one which seemed like a truly foolish waste to him.

She wasn't 'made' of time, in the end she was going to have less of it than anyone; she was living through her lifespan at breakneck speed so she could play hero for the town. He couldn't even guess how many times she must relive minutes, hours, perhaps even entire nights in her quest to stop crime wherever she found it, but it explained how she could be spotted in many places at once or how every time a fight was going badly she'd suddenly multiply. No one else whose ideas he'd ready had even seemed to consider that her powers could be making her sacrifice herself; she had superpowers, after all, and who ever heard of superpowers doing anything but good for their users?

Aside from Equius himself, of course, who could still remember what a terrible time he'd had with his in his early childhood.

It was only after he became sure of his theories that his fascination finally, for the first time, moved to the girl herself. What type of person could she be, how could she possibly be willing to do something like that for complete strangers? It was foolish, yes, but noble as well, and though in his attempts to make sure his name was well-regarded he'd never gone so far as to strive for nobility himself it was still a trait that he could admire.

She managed to conduct herself with grace besides, her fighting style neat and elegant in comparison to the unpolished blows the thugs she usually had for opponents threw against her, her manner gentle enough to always take a moment to check the state of the people she rescued even if she got to them before their attackers so much as touched them--even staying by their side until the police or an ambulance arrived if they were injured or too afraid to stay by themselves--and she was the first hero he'd ever heard of didn't even seem to care whether or not the crimes she prevented were important enough to become front page news.

Half a year after Nepeta first shoved her magazine at him he was watching the news with her again, staring at a photo someone had caught of the Maid pushing the loose strands of her hair back and exposing the curve of her ear and a glimpse of her cheekbone in the process, when it suddenly hit him that he didn't just want to watch her from a distance like this. He wanted to _meet_ her. He wanted to learn about her by speaking with her, not just make guesses based on what he saw on the television.

And, he thought, he'd like for her to know him as well.

He was so used to using Nepeta as his sounding board when thinking through any new ideas that he hardly even realized he was doing it when he idly said to her, "How do you suppose one goes about meeting a hero?"

She leaned against his shoulder, one of the cat ears on her hood tickling his chin, and stared thoughtfully into the air. "Mrr... I guess you just need to be purrsued by a bad guy," she told him. Then, appropriately as she was one who'd first caused his fascination she added something that gave him an idea for how to chase it. "Or be the one breaking the paw!"

"'Law'," he corrected absently, "if you _must_ do that, at least try to avoid causing confusion by using an entirely different word than the one you mean. Besides, what would Terezi think if she heard you disrespecting the law like that?"

"Terezi would play along," Nepeta said, batting at his knee a little harder than would usually be considered a playful whack, although she knew that with his durability he wouldn't mind at all. " _She_ likes me just the way I am, unlike some people, you big bully."

At any other time he would quickly remind her that correcting her word usage hardly counted as bullying, and that considering he'd given her a suite of rooms in his tower where she could live away from family members who were much less tolerant of her idiosyncrasies she didn't have much room to complain, but his thoughts were too full to worry about it.

She'd given him his answer, just like that. With a little help from the strength he'd spent so many years trying his best to pretend didn't exist he could easily commit an apparent crime that The Maid wouldn't be able to stay away from, and just like that the woman that he'd been watching from afar for so many months would be standing right in front of his eyes.


	6. No Easy Way Out

There had never been a supervillain in Alternia City. Everyone knew it, and Aradia _relied_ on it. Her powers were good for getting where she needed to be when she needed to be in order to stop criminals in their tracks, but apart from her multiplication trick they were no use in a fight. She always got the job done, but she needed to win through the strength of her own muscles and the speed of her whip. That was perfectly fine when her opponents were ordinary, everyday, humans, but against anyone with powers that could actually be used on the offense she'd need to be incredibly lucky to come out ahead.

In normal situations she'd moved past the point where she faced fights with any type of fear. Since her first night on the streets she'd righted all types of wrongs, foiling robberies, flying rapists, saving children from wandering into traffic, but all the events she'd stopped before they could happen were mundane in their horribleness. She would be cautious going into them, but not really worry about it; she knew that she would win, even if from time to time another her was sacrificed to prevent a wound that would have been disabling or deadly.

But the day she glanced at the front page of the local paper in the morning and saw the headlines screaming about a bank robber who had managed to tear straight through the walls of a reinforced safe with ease she felt like she was brand new to her work all over again, full of fear over what she knew she was going to face. No, she felt _worse_ than she ever had during those first few weeks. Back then there had been fear, yes, but it had been all but hidden by excitement and adrenaline.

Looking at the images that had been captured by the bank's security footage, so clear that it was almost like the villain had _wanted_ them to get a good look at just what he could do, Aradia felt nothing but terror.

Her powers would give her _no_ kind of advantage over superstrength, aside from the brief instant where she'd hopefully have the element of surprise on her side. And what good could her kicks, or punches, or even her weapon do against someone durable enough to rip through concrete without getting a scratch? He would shrug them straight off and then one strike from him in return would be enough to absolutely destroy her, killing her so quickly that she wouldn't even have the few fragile seconds she'd need to cling to life to go back and push herself out of the way. Even if she looped herself into a hundred copies it wouldn't make a difference, if he could tear through steel like it was tissue paper he'd be able to tear through a crowd of her just as easily.

For the first time she really felt like having a body that, for all the power it held, was just as vulnerable as anyone else's was honestly a weakness.

And if she felt that afraid she didn't even like to think about what it would be like for her other self, currently waiting in ignorant bliss back at the start of the previous evening. At least she knew that _she_ wouldn't be the one facing this man.

Most mornings she took the time to walk to Sollux's after getting her paper. She liked getting to look at her city in the early morning hours that she always missed out on as her prime timeline self, and finding different winding ways to cover the miles between her cabin and his house that for all she knew might actually be the same way every time. She loved seeing her city at peace, even if she knew it was only an illusion that would be shattered before long; the more time she spent protecting it the more possessive she felt about all of Alternia City, from its brightest park to its dingiest alleyway.

And now there was someone out there with the power to smash it all to rubble. It only took her seconds to decide that there was no time to waste on walking, not considering the fact that it didn't matter how quickly or slowly she moved when she'd shortly be undoing the last night, or even that teleporting in the middle of the road without her costume on wasn't the wisest idea. She just moved herself to his room.

He was already waiting for her, grabbing her hand the minute she appeared though she had no idea whether the move was made for her comfort or his own.

"What type of shitty supervillain did you managed to get, AA?" he asked shakily, obviously trying to lighten her mood with a joke. "He's got the most half-assed fucking costume I've ever seen. What's he supposed to be, Catgirl Man?"

But the attempt at humor didn't work for her at all. "How can I fight against this, Sollux," she asked him, sinking down to sit on the floor beside his chair. "Now's the best time to make a plan, but I don't even know where to start."

* * *

The plan that her alternate self offered when she came with the night's list of crimes hardly even counted as one, but it was the best she'd been able to come up with and Aradia couldn't think of anything else to try. She'd probably die that night, she knew. It would probably be an outright slaughter.

But she was going to go. She couldn't not.

She stopped every other crime that night first. If she seemed a little more listless than normal during her fights, or a little more distracted and less friendly than usual when checking on the people she'd helped afterwards, nobody commented on it then. Maybe the next day they would, the last people who'd ever seen the Maid of Time alive giving interviews on the news about how she seemed like she'd somehow known what was coming.

She tried not to think about it.

When she was done with everything else she still didn't go to the bank, not yet. She looped back to the start of the night, to Sollux's room. She was surprised to find him already in bed, playing some game, instead of at his usual spot in front of his computer, but didn't say anything about it. She just pulled back the covers and crawled in next to him still in her full costume, some distant part of her mind that was still detached enough from what she knew was coming to care hoping she didn't smell too badly after the night's exertions. It took her a minute to even realize she should at least wiggle her feet out of her shoes. "I'm going to stay here tonight, okay Sollux?" she mumbled, pressing her face against his shoulder so he couldn't get a good look at her face and all the fear and sorrow that she knew must be on it.

"Sure, AA," he said, the worry obvious in his voice. "Something wrong?"

She shook her head silently, looping her arm around his waist. She knew he'd realize that she meant she wasn't going to talk about it, not that everything was just fine, but he knew her well enough not to press. Maybe it was doing him a disservice, not letting him know what was coming, but he'd find out soon enough. It was better that at least one of them could go through the night not needing to know what would happen. She'd probably worried him badly enough that he wouldn't be able to rest easily anyway, but he _still_ wouldn't be as upset as he'd have been if he knew she was probably going to get herself killed the next morning... or in the middle of the night, depending on how you looked at it.

For the first time in all the years they'd had sleepovers together Aradia woke up earlier than Sollux the next morning, though he started to stir the minute she pulled away from him. Even more unusually she jumped right up and ran for his computer, which she'd _never_ touched without his permission.

Actually, she didn't think she'd ever touched it at all, just hovering behind him while he found whatever she needed to see.

She didn't bother trying to figure out how he managed to get into the police database, just opening up an internet browser and pulling up the website for the paper she'd first learned about the villain from, in the same morning's edition. What she saw was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

There wasn't a word about a bank robber, superpowered or otherwise, on their main page. No pictures, no headlines, no nothing. Whatever was about to happen she'd be successful in stopping him, at least for that night.

There was nothing about The Maid of Time being found dead either, but she didn't take that as a guarantee that she'd win without becoming a casualty. Her body might just be lying out there somewhere still, not to be discovered for hours yet.

"You ready to tell me what the fuck got you so upset yet, AA?" Sollux asked behind her. She turned to see him quickly skimming the articles, obviously looking for clues.

"No," she said, managing to work up a smile for him. "Sorry, Sollux, you'll be happier if I don't. But I promise that as soon as I'm done with this I'll tell you the whole story."

If she could.

* * *

If there was some trick to controlling the exact spot she teleported to when she used her powers to move from place to place, she'd never learned it. She had exact control of the _when_ , and if she was moving to somewhere indoors her control became much more tight as it let her go to whatever room she was trying to get into, but whatever force moved her was the one that decided where she'd be best situated to change whatever event she was attempting to undo. She'd often wished that wasn't the case--if she could manage to fly, or even just hover, of her own free will instead of just finding herself in the air when her powers decided being on the ground was too dangerous her life would be much easier--but it usually seemed to know what it was doing.

This time it managed to knock it out of the park. She found herself standing on the roof of the building right next door to the bank, a skyscraper that she knew had to be the Zahhak Enterprises tower. And there, standing on the edge of the roof directly in front of her, was the man in the strange cat-eared hood that she'd come seeking.

He had his back to her and was checking his watch, waiting for a certain time before he started to move Aradia guessed. She didn't allow herself to hesitate for even an instant, taking the opening she was giving and hoping with everything in her that it would let her make it through the night without fighting against him.

Let him need to be concentrating to use his strength, she thought. Let her be able to injure him if she just managed to catch him by surprise.

She cracked her whip, sending it spiraling around his throat, and pulled it as tightly as she could. If she could only cut off his breath long enough to get him to pass out she might be able to win; it was a move so dangerous that she'd never dare to use against an ordinary person, but the circumstances were far from normal.

For just a moment he stood there without reacting and she thought that maybe it would work. But that moment was all she had before he yanked the whip out of her hand with ease and started carefully unwinding it from around his throat.

She dropped into a ready position, prepared to fight still even if she knew how hopeless the odds were. She was going to succeed, she reminded herself. She knew that she was going to succeed. "I won't let you get away with what you're planning, Mr. Cat Man," she told him, and was proud to hear that her voice didn't even tremble.

"Void, if you must use a ridiculous name like that," he told her, and she was surprised by how calm and unthreatening his voice was. "Not that it's much less terrible, but it took more time then I'd care to admit to talk my cousin into helping me think of a name with any amount of dignity at all." He turned finally, but still didn't make a single threatening move, only stared at her as if he was amazed to see her there. "You're here," he said at last, a faint note of wonder tinging his previously calm tone. "I had hoped to meet you."

She backed away from him, confusion starting to break through the fear and determination that she'd been carrying with her for hours, but she didn't let her defensive posture drop. "Whatever it takes, I'm going to stop you from robbing that bank. Do you have any idea how many lives you could ruin by--"

"None at all," he cut her off smoothly. "Did tomorrow's news forget to mention that it was a private vault that would have been robbed? That is how you learned about me, correct?"

"How did--" she started, then clamped her mouth shut cutting off the words. If you were a hero whose powers weren't entirely straightforward you did _not_ talk about how they worked, it would only give criminals more information to use if they were trying to work out ways around them. That was one of the first things she'd learned since becoming a hero.

He jumped forward suddenly, covering the yards between them in a single bound and startling her into a punch that he easily caught. Before she could even think of stopping him he snatched the paper that she had tucked into her belt away from her. When he unfolded it he revealed the front page she'd torn off the paper and carried with her, occasionally opening it to look at the photos and remind herself what she was up against, ever since her other self had dropped it off. He skimmed quickly over it, then tapped the date shown in the top corner; a day they wouldn't reach for another twenty minutes yet. "As I thought," he said.

"So you admit that's you?" she told him, and _now_ her voice was shaking but it was with uncertainty rather than fear. "If I contact the police will you go quietly?"

"Contact the police? For what?" he asked. "No one here has committed any crime. Congratulations, Maid of Time, you've done your job. The city is at peace." He pulled her a little closer, his grasp gentle but unbreakable, but stopped when she still had enough distance that she knew from experience her disguise would hold in the darkness of the night. It didn't stop him from studying her closely. "You're younger than I expected. Are you sixteen? Seventeen?"

"That's not any of your business!" she snapped, pulling back from him. Though he'd certainly have been able to hold onto her if he'd wanted to, he allowed her break away. Though he'd managed to throw her off her game in every possible way, she still tried to pulled herself together enough to keep doing her job. "And even if you haven't broken into the bank, you're still trespassing! I'm sure the Zahhak family would like to press charges against a criminal who snuck into their building to commit a robbery!"

He shocked her worse than he had with anything else he'd done that night by laughing, the sound rough and shaky like he wasn't used to doing it. "I don't think so," he said, and reached up to push the cat-eared hood and the rough mask sewn to it off his head. "I can't very well trespass in my own building, can I? Anymore than it would have been stealing to take my own funds out of my own vault; although I'm sure the bank would prefer that I do so in the usual manner, if you hadn't come tonight I'm sure they'd excuse a little eccentricity from one of their best customers when I returned it tomorrow afternoon."

But before he'd even finished what he was saying she was gone, and reappearing in her own bedroom shaking and pressing her hand to her chest like she might be able to slow down her heart by doing so.

That had been Equius Zahhak. _Equius Zahhak_ , the wealthiest, most important man in her city. Head of the only company with headquarters in Alternia City important enough to be known outside of it.

And he had superpowers. Equius Zahhak had superpowers that he'd used to put together some mad plan to meet _her_. She'd thought she was past the point where much of anything could shock her--being more or less a superpowered zombie, for all that she was more fully reanimated than most, made most things less startling in comparison--but it just didn't seem possible for her to be living in a world where that was a thing that was true.

She looked into the mirror she had hanging on the wall, wondering if she was really interesting enough to be worth all the trouble, and the sight reminded her of something else that he'd said. She slowly pushed back her hood to reveal her face, studying every detail closely as they appeared.

Did she really look like she could be seventeen? The purse she'd started carrying was lying on her bed stand and she grabbed it up, digging up the copy of that year's student ID that Feferi had brought her and holding it up to compare their faces.

Almost two years before she and Feferi had looked closely enough alike that even if anyone had ever bothered to look twice at that old ID it wouldn't have mattered. But now her hair was still just as long and wild, and when she pulled out her fake glasses and put them on her face the frames were just as thick, but if anyone ever really paid attention the differences would be easy to spot. Her face had thinned, her features becoming more defined as the baby fat vanished, and, yes... though the changes had been so gradual that she'd never even noticed them before, she looked obviously older than Feferi.

She thought back on the many, _many_ hours she'd relived multiple times since gaining her powers, recognizing what they meant for the first time. It wasn't like she wasn't _living_ that time just because to the outside world only one night had gone by, but somehow it just never seemed to count to her. The calendar told her that the earthquake had happened almost two years ago so she just took that as the truth, never considering how very long those years felt to her.

But the question was, how much time _had_ she lost?


	7. Time Waits For No One

"I _guess_ I can see it," Sollux said, frowning at her face the next afternoon. She wished that she could have seen him sooner, but if she'd woken her younger self up by trying to talk to him while she had been sleeping in his bed it would have made a mess of the time loop she was just coming out of, and once morning came he had to go off to school. So she waited until the minute she knew he'd be free for the day to call him up.

In a way she supposed that she should be grateful to Equius Zahhak for making her take a good hard look at herself. When Sollux picked up on the first ring he was still full of questions about what on earth had upset her so much the night before, but when she told him that she thought she was aging wrong he just assumed that was the problem. Aradia let the misunderstanding slide; if she'd understood what had gone on the night before correctly she wasn't in any actual _danger_ from Mr. Zahhak, so why upset Sollux by letting him know that she'd been expecting to die and hadn't said anything about it when she'd left him that morning?

She did give him part of the truth. She let him know that she'd met another superpowered human the night before, one who had sought her out to meet the other person like him in their town, and that he had been the one who'd asked about her age. She just didn't tell him who that person was, or the method he'd used to bring her to him.

She was guiltily aware that it was the first major secret she'd kept from Sollux in her entire life. She'd never even been able to keep the birthday and holiday presents she got for him a secret if he asked her straight out what she'd bought, but what else could she do? The identity of the other superhuman in town wasn't her secret to reveal; maybe if it had just been some random guy off the street that would have been different, but she wasn't going to run around blabbing the secrets of the most powerful man in not only Alternia City but practically the entire state. She was sure that he'd only trusted her with them because he knew that as a superheroine she'd be used to keeping that type of secret safe, and she didn't betray the trust that her people had in her no matter what insane ways they had of showing it.

As for his methods, well, that was entirely selfish. She didn't want her best friend in the world yelling at her about taking stupid fucking risks, was that so terrible?

"I got something from home before I came up here," Sollux went on while she thought, shrugging off the backpack he'd carried all the way to her cabin and opening it up. "Dunno if you'll want to look at them, but when you said what the deal is I figured it'd help us work this out."

What he pulled out of his bag was a photo album, and Aradia almost flinched away from the images that were revealed when he flipped it open to a spot a few pages in.

She hadn't seen a picture of either of her parents in years. She hadn't brought any with her when she first moved to the cabin because looking at them ached too much, and she hadn't stopped to gather any since because that had never changed. But there they were smiling at her from the page, her mother and father and Sollux's all looking so happy as they held their newborn babies.

She had _always_ known Sollux. They had been born in the same delivery room together, their birthdays landing on different days by just minutes. Their parents had bonded first in the hospital then while taking the same parenting class together until they were good enough friends that there was no doubt their children would keep having play dates together for as long as they wanted to. And they had never stopped wanting to. Of course his family photo albums had a bunch of pictures of her family in them. She knew the ones she'd left back home had lots of his in them too.

"I figured," he said, watching her closely like he still wasn't sure how she'd react, "you look sort of like your mom. We can try working out your age compared to her back then."

Aradia took a deep breath, then reached out to turn the page. "Okay, but one where she didn't just give birth would probably be better."

Her parents had been young when they'd had her, her mother only twenty-one. Aradia was sure that she couldn't have lost _that_ much time, but at least she could try to judge how close she was to it.

She guessed that she did look a lot like her mother, Aradia thought as she looked at another photo. Her coloring was more like her father's but her features came more from her mother, broad mouth and wide eyes and the wave in her hair. "I think..." she said slowly, lightly running her finger over the glossy image of her mother's face, "I think I look closer to the age we're supposed to be than I do to her. Do you? It's so hard to tell!"

He pried up the picture she was looking at and held it up against her face, looking back and forth between them a few times before giving her a quick nod. "Yeah," he agreed. "You aren't old enough that you'd look weird hanging out with us fucking freshmen just yet, AA."

She laughed brightly and grinned at him, "That's a thought! If I get much further ahead of you people might think I'm your babysitter if they see us together."

"Or they'll think I'm such a cool guy that older girls want to hang around me," Sollux said, then snorted an shook his head. "Like that'd ever happen. Guess they'll just think you're such a shitty person that only asshole kids are willing to spend time with you. Sorry about that."

"No insulting yourself in my cabin, you know the rules!" she said, lightly flicking the side of his head. "Go to Karkat's if you want to have a pity party."

They were interrupted by Feferi barging through the door. "Sorry I'm late! I had a swim meet," she said unnecessarily; the chlorine smell clinging to her still-damp hair would have been explanation enough for them. "Then I stopped to snare something. Here!"

She dropped a small brightly-colored gift bag in front of Aradia, 'Happy Belated Birthday!' written across its front. Aradia blinked at it, then looked at Feferi with her eyebrows raised. "We celebrated my birthday, remember?"

"But apparently a few slipped the hook when we weren't paying attention, right? This should help! Go ahead, open it!"

Aradia pulled out the tissue paper stuffed into the bag, revealing a jeweler's box within. When she popped it open she found a thin pocket watch within.

"I got that kind because I thought a wristwatch would just break when you were guarding in a fight. Sea?" Feferi said, pushing the button that popped open its cover and tapping at the face, "It shows you the date and the year too. Just keep it with you, and you won't get swept away by time again."

Aradia watched the seconds tick by. She would probably never know exactly how many she'd lost without realizing it, but now that she had that knowledge as long as she was careful she'd be able to hold onto the rest.

And luckily she had an easy place to carry it where she knew she'd never forget it and leave it behind. She unhooked the chain she wore around her neck and slipped the watch onto it, letting it dangle like a pendant beside her parents' rings. "Thank you, Feferi," she said. "I'll make sure to keep it with me always."


	8. Slow and Steady

Equius would have greatly preferred that their first meeting not have ended with the Maid of Time spooking and fleeing him, but at least it had gone much better than any of the worst-case scenarios he had considered. Aside from that one instinctive punch she hadn't attempted to keep attacking him, and as days went by it became clear that he had been right in assuming that she wouldn't run to the press with tales of his strength if he revealed himself to her. He was satisfied with that. There would be plenty of opportunities for him to make a better impression, he was sure of it.

But he waited before the next, allowing her time to think about their meeting before she needed to face him again. He kept the newspaper clipping that he'd taken from her, studying it from time to time and considering the timeline that would never be. For all that he'd waved off his crime to the Maid's face, the truth was that if that other timeline still existed somewhere that Equius had ruined his life so that he would have a chance to know her. No one would buy products from a terrifying madman who could plow straight through walls, and though he had enough money to live out his life on without the company he _enjoyed_ his work and wanted it to continue. Beyond that, it would be as if all the years he'd worked to make a respectable name for himself had never existed as the world forgot everything except the contents of those photos.

Photos that were more than a little foolish looking, to make matters worse. It wasn't as though he'd put much effort into his costume, if taking off his jacket and pulling on a mask and gloves without otherwise changing out of the suit he'd worn to work could even be called that. His only goals were to avoid leaving fingerprints and to disguise his face just well enough that he wouldn't be recognized and arrested before the story hit the morning news. It wouldn't do for the Maid to think that she didn't need to stop him when he'd already been caught so quickly by the police after all. But he should have at least asked Nepeta to make the mask out of the same type of fabric as her old hood that she'd sewn it to.

He would just need to make sure that things went well with the Maid in days to come, to make sure his actions would be worth it to any version of himself that might now be the joke of the business world in some alternate universe.

The second time he lured her to him he was less flashy about it. Just a broken wall or two in the bank would be enough to make her come now that she knew what he was doing, he didn't need to take any money to make sure it would be a big enough story to catch her eye.

She didn't look frightened this time, or prepare to attack. In fact, she mostly just seemed annoyed with him. "You can't just summon me as a joke whenever you want!" she snapped at him when she appeared, planting her hands on her hips. "You're the richest man in town, Mr. Zahhak, I'm sure with all that money you can find something to do with your time that doesn't involve playing with superheroes."

"You could call me Equius, if you'd like. You don't need to be so formal," he told her. "I'm happy to see you again."

"Well, sorry if I'm not that thrilled to see the man who terrified me the first time we met." She took one bold step forward, tilting her head back to keep looking him in the face, though he didn't know that it should matter so much when there was no eye-contact to be maintained. "I don't really need someone treating me like a neat new toy at the end of a long hard night, Mr... Equius, and all my nights are long and hard."

"Would you like to talk about it? My butler should have a meal ready downstairs, and I'm sure there would be enough for two if you'd like to, ah... vent. I know it's not exactly in his job description, but you can't beat Aurthour in a chef-off. He's simply the best there is."

He only had her mouth to look at to try and judge her mood as she thought over his invitation. He watched as she first bit down on her lower lip, then pressed her lips together into a tight flat line. "Okay, if you'd like me to so much I'll 'vent'," she said, "but I'll do it right here. _Just_ before I came here I had to stop a nasty domestic disturbance before the couple involved started beating on each other right in the street outside of their apartment. Maybe you just see the big cool stories about me on the news and think it would be fun to hear some of them right out of my mouth, but half the time I'm just dealing with otherwise normal people doing awful things like that to each other and trying my best to make them turn out less horrible. That's what my nights are like; do you get why I'd like you to keep from adding a new hassle to them?"

"I don't intend to. I'm sure you'll realize that eventually." He couldn't believe that she wouldn't, he planned to be nothing but well-mannered and helpful towards her.

She frowned, obviously unhappy with that answer. "I was hoping for maybe something more like 'I understand, Maid of Time, and I won't bother you again.'"

"You'll be glad that I bothered you tonight, I promise," he told her, trying a smile. He'd spent time over the past few weeks practicing them with Nepeta until she finally critically proclaimed that at least he looked _less_ like he had no idea what his mouth was doing, although she told him that he'd better never try to play friendly boss at work. As though there was any risk of that; at his age he needed to do all he could to make sure everyone knew he was a serious businessman in spite of his youth, and trying to pal around with his workers would only harm that image. "I wanted to return your weapon to you. You forgot it here after trying to strangle me with it. I hope that your fights since than haven't been too difficult without it."

"Oh," she said, apparently brought up short by him turning out to have a good reason for getting her to appear. After a moment she added, "I'm sorry about that," and then, "...Wait, why are there two?"

"I thought that a better quality weapon might be useful, and luckily I know a man who could make recommendations. Although, if you'd ever consider switching to a horsewhip I know enough to make my own suggestions. That one is high quality and should last you a very long time, while the one you've been using... ah... well, appears to be from some type of... adult novelty store." Equius felt his palms growing wet and was thankful that the night should disguise the few beads of sweat he could feel dripping down from his temples. He never could manage to talk about anything at all sexual without getting ridiculously embarrassed for a man of his age, though for the time being he was glad that he only showed it by sweating and not by blushing.

Unlike the Maid, whose change in color all the way down to her neck was obvious even in the darkness and with the small amount of her skin he was able to see. He thought it was charming, though that might just be because he was happy to see he wasn't the only one feeling discomfited by such a small thing. "I just bought it from somebody on EBay," she said, "I don't know where they got it from. You, um, you don't think anybody else thinks that, do you?"

"Unless you let anyone close enough to look at the manufacturer's mark on the handle, I doubt it. The people in this city are more likely to think it's some type of magical key to your powers, they seem to love theories like that." In fact, he thought that he'd seen exactly that before, although the man spouting it had been an outrageous sexist obviously scrambling for a way to justify a 'fragile' young woman beating so many strong men; a whip that gave anyone who held it the soul of a warrior was apparently what worked for him. "Are you sure you're not hungry? I can guarantee that the meal will be wonderful."

She backed away from him a step, shaking her head. "You don't know how to stop when you're ahead, do you Equius Zahhak?" she asked before vanishing again.

But he couldn't help but notice that she took his gift with her.

* * *

She didn't catch him by surprise the next time she appeared. Equius watched carefully while he waited, and when she arrived he was ready to have the first word.

"Sandwiches," he said to her, gesturing to a small picnic basket he had on the roof beside him. "I'm sure you can spare just five minutes for one, and I won't try to convince you to come in doors where you might feel trapped."

She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot but just as he was starting to think she wouldn't accept even this much of his hospitality she said, " _Fine_. Maybe this'll finally get it out of your system."

She walked over to him, hesitating when she got close but, perhaps remembering from their first meeting how quickly he could close the distance between them if he'd had any plans of grabbing her, coming all the way to the basket in the end. She grabbed one at random, apparently not even paying any attention to the selection. Though they'd all already been halved she tore it roughly into quarters, and held two of them from opposite halves towards him. "Here, to start you eat from the same one I do. Just in case."

"You can't think I'm trying to poison you," he said, staring at her incredulously. Out of every argument he'd thought of that she might make against eating with him, that was one he'd never even considered. She knew about his strength, if he'd wanted to attack her why would he use anything else?

But she shrugged, repeated, "Just in case," and didn't take a bite until he'd eaten a piece from each of the hunks he'd given her. Once she was satisfied she finally found her own spot to sit beside the wall, several feet from him but still close enough to talk, and took her first nibble.

"Even if I had done something to them, couldn't you have just given me one of the halves instead of mangling them?" he asked, watching her more than eating himself. In spite of all her initial wariness, once she realized that they were good she quickly began tearing into her pieces with large chomps. It seemed that heroism was hungry work.

At least, Equius hoped that was the case. If that was the way she usually ate he'd really need to give her a few suggestions about table manners.

She shook her head at his question, swallowing down a mouthful of sandwich before giving a real answer. "That wouldn't be good enough. Do you know Snow White?"

"The Disney film?" he asked, not seeing the connection.

"No, the fairy tale. The witch only poisoned one half of the apple that killed Snow White, so she could take a bite of the safe side and look like she'd proved it was okay to eat. You're supposed to be my city's genius young executive; unless all the journalists have been wrong about you, I'm sure you're smart enough to think up that trick." She actually offered a very slight smile as she paid him the compliment.

"The Mayor might have a thing or two to say about you calling it 'your' city," he told her, then internally cursed himself as her smile disappeared. Nepeta had _warned_ him not to even attempt to make any jokes no matter how many times he'd heard it said that humor helped put people at ease, at least not until she knew him well enough to realize that was what he was trying.

But she straighten up and almost defiantly said, "It _is_ my city. I protect it, I take care of it, I... I know it better than almost anybody else, I bet. Look over there," she gestured out over the wall surrounding the roof, a grand sweep taking in all of the city in that direction. "How many of those buildings could you name looking down on them from up here? Five maybe? Ten? _I_ could give you a whole tour of the city just from here, at least as far as the skyscrapers let us see." She folded one of her arms on the wall and rested her chin on it, just barely tall enough to do so comfortably, and let the other arm stretch out over the edge like she was trying to reach out and caress the cityscape. Her smile was back but wider this time, affectionate, as she gazed out over all the buildings. "That counts for something, don't you think? It might not belong just to me, but that doesn't mean it isn't mine."

It was one more detail to file away about her, one more clue about how she could do the things she did. And with it Equius thought that he was finally starting to understand, the slightest bit, how she was able to go out and give of herself to make the city a better place. Doing it purely out of the good of her heart would be baffling, but trying to protect somewhere that she felt possessive of was an idea that he thought he could grasp.

But there was still more that he wanted to know, much more. "How long have you had your powers?" he asked, pulling another sandwich and a pint of milk out of the basket and setting them at her elbow. Her shoulders stiffened at the question, too close to being personal information he supposed. To try and set her at her ease he went on, "I was born with mine, and wondered if it was the same for you. Or what type of difficulties you might have faced, being untethered from time, until you learned to control them."

"'Difficulties'?" she repeated, turning slightly to face him. Then she wasn't born with hers, he supposed, or else time travel was much easier to get in synch to the rest of the world than his strength had been.

Equius saw no reason not to be honest with her in answering. The details of his childhood were hardly a bigger secret than his strength itself. "It took me years to learn how to touch anything without breaking it. I wasn't even able to come in contact with other children my own age until they brought in a girl with psychic abilities, who could control me with a thought if she thought my control was going to slip while playing with her." He smiled wryly as he considered his old playmate for the first time in ages and added, "Or anytime that she thought it would be funny, or just felt like it with no apparent reason at all. As you might guess, I didn't try to stay friends with her once I was secure enough with my strength not to need that safety net."

She stayed quiet for several long moments, unwrapping her new sandwich then frowning at its contents and swapping it for another; he made a mental note that she apparently wasn't fond of ham. She ate this one a little less ravenously than she had with the first. Finally, after washing down the very last bite with a gulp of milk, she quietly said, "I was thirteen. Thirteen and I never really had trouble with the time traveling part. I can just hear it, where I need to be, when I need to be." She tilted her head a little further towards him, until he thought he could just see the glint of one of her eyes. "Right here, tonight, sounded... nice. That's why I decided to stay."

Equius felt like he'd just learned something very important that he was completely incapable of understanding. If she'd said that she could just feel how to get from one moment to another it would make some sense, in a new agey type of way, but how could somebody _hear_ the progress of time? But if she'd gotten edgy just about telling him how old she'd been when she first got her powers, he was absolutely sure that she'd decide that being any clearer about that would be giving too much information away. He went with a question that he knew she was probably equally unlikely to answer, but which was unimportant enough given that they both knew the way she lived through time made it meaningless that he thought he might as well try. "How long ago was that to those of use living through time in a straight line?"

"Does it matter?" she asked, shrugging. "You know that's not how long it's really been."

"I suppose that you're right."

He watched her start into a third sandwich with no sign of slowing down, any worries about what might be in them apparently long gone. He was a little surprised at just how easy it was to sit there beside her. He thought that on some level he must have expected that when he finally had a chance to really speak with her his infatuation would begin to fade with her mystery and he'd quickly become as uninterested in talking to her as he was with most people.

Instead there was somehow something comfortable about being with her even if it was difficult to get her to open up with him. He'd rarely met anyone apart from Nepeta who didn't seem to care at all about his name or his family, who wasn't awed by his status, and who desired nothing out of him but something as simple as not robbing a bank when that wasn't something he even wanted to do. It was honestly pleasant, and there weren't many things that he'd say that about.

By the time she reached the last few bites she finally seemed to have gotten her fill, spending more time picking at the crust with her fingernail then she did actually eating. And then she finally made her own contribution to the conversation without any prompting from him. "Okay, I just need to ask this, because I've been wondering ever since the first time I came out here. What's _with_ your costume? You've got billions and billions of dollars, you can't afford to make something that's less... well, a friend of mine said 'half-assed' when he saw photos of it on the news."

"And you shouldn't repeat it, swearing only makes a person sound crass," he said automatically, repeating advice that he'd given Nepeta more than once in the past. "You can blame my cousin for that; I can't sew so I asked her help making a mask. She's _very_ fond of cats. The hood is one of her own hats, she just added the mask to it. There is an entire costume that goes with it, but I told her that I wouldn't wear anything with that much fur sewn onto it, even if it was fake, and just wore my own clothing." He focused on his 'disguise' as he told the story, turning the hood over and over in his hands as he thought about the girl who'd made it, and when he looked up again he was surprised to see that the Maid had relaxed during it, her smile returning warmer than ever.

"You actually look more like a normal person than some kind of executive-bot trying to imitate our strange Hu-Man ways when you're talking about your cousin," she said, pushing herself away from the wall and dusting the last crumbs from her hands. "You should try acting like that more often. It's nice."

Before he had any chance to ask her if she could be clearer about the differences, she was gone.

* * *

By her sixth visit she stopped looking like she wanted to throttle him whenever she arrived. By the tenth she would freely chat with him, although she still shied away from any topics that might give him enough information to learn anything about what her regular life was like.

He still managed to glean a few small things out of their conversations. She had at least one friend who knew her secret identity that she referred to in passing a few times. She wasn't in school, judging by the amount of time she admitted to spending just wandering the city during the day. Even so she knew a surprising amount about archeology, as he learned after a question about why she chose to use a whip made her start gushing about Indiana Jones which quickly turned into a mini lecture about all the things that she _knew_ he did wrong even though she still liked him anyway.

The details she let slip weren't enough to tell him much of anything about her life, yet he found that it didn't really matter. Even if he didn't know her name, or her station in life, or even her face he still felt like he was getting to know _her_ well. Who she was as a person, what she liked and disliked, the types of things that made her laugh and the ones that would make her quiver with anger. The more he talked with her the less those private facts about her life that he wasn't allowed to know seemed to matter.

Which would have seemed like complete nonsense to him before they'd met. _Of course_ the facts mattered, they were incredibly important. How could you tell if a person was worth spending time on if you couldn't look over their life to judge whether they deserved it or if being seen with them would only drag your name into the mud? Not that there was any risk of that when the 'them' in question was the city's beloved superheroine.

But somehow none of that even seemed to matter.

And then, on her thirteenth visit, he had a stroke of luck. It was a cloudy night, but the weather forecast had said it wouldn't start raining until the early morning hours so he decided to risk it. But when she appeared, dripping wet, she quickly said, "The downpour is going to start in just a few minutes. Not that it's not nice to see you again, but there's no time for picnicking. Bye!"

He grabbed her by the wrist to try and stop her from vanishing, his body quickly moving on an idea that his conscious mind didn't even fully reach for another second, and before she could go anywhere he said, "We don't need to eat where we'd be rained on. We could go into the stairwell. Just a few inches indoors; you can't think I'd try to find a way trap you with the exit right beside us."

She bit her lip, ducked her head. "It's not that I still think you'd do anything like that, Equius. It's just, I can't..." she hesitated, struggling to find whatever explanation she was trying to give him, and ended up taking too long. The sky burst open above them and it became clear that she'd hadn't been exaggerating when she'd called it a downpour; in just a few seconds it went from no rain at all to a complete deluge.

He didn't wait any longer for her to finish her answer, if she really didn't want to come inside it wasn't as if he was even capable of holding her when she was able to teleport. He grabbed the picnic basket with his free hand and pulled her towards the door, not really noticing as his grip slipped from her wrist to lead her by the hand as they walked. He was too busy being very aware that she wasn't even trying to fight him, or to disappear under his touch.

He never bothered to turn on the lights in the stairway to the roof when he came up to meet her, seeing it as a pointless waste of electricity when it wasn't as if he'd be hurt if he ever tumbled down the stairs. When they got inside it was even darker there than it had been out in the night; the slit of a window in the door let in just enough light that if he strained his eyes he could barely make her out as a more solid patch of darkness against the blackness surrounding them.

He tried to reach for the light switch but found her hand blocking it, and she pushed him away when he tried to move it aside. "Wait," she said, her voice little louder than a whisper in the night. "You know, I told myself that I'd never let you talk me into leaving that roof. It was okay being there, it hardly even counted as being in a place that was _yours_ and I could see more of the city from there than anywhere else I've ever been, and... it was okay. But now I'm inside, and I just, I need to know... _Why_ do you keep doing this? What do you want out of me? I kept thinking that you'd get tired of this eventually and stop it, but it's starting to look like that's never going to happen and I can't keep not knowing."

He tried to study her, to see if he could get some idea of what she was hoping to hear from the way she looked, but it was impossible. She was nothing but a vague shadowy blotch.

So he went with the truth. Why not put all his cards on the table when he was fairly sure he had nothing to lose by showing them?

"The first few times it was nothing but curiosity. I had worked out how your powers functioned and it made me wonder what type of person could do what you do every night at that type of cost. But now?" He shrugged, realizing too late that she wouldn't be able to see it. "I like being with you. I would rather not stop. There are _very_ few people that I will honestly say that about."

"But _why?_ " she asked, a touch of what almost seemed like panic entering her voice but why would that possibly be? "You don't even know my name! You wouldn't be able to pick my face out of a lineup even if every other people looked completely different from me aside from how they wear their bangs. You don't know _anything_ about me except stories I can tell you without worrying about my identity."

He reached out carefully towards her, finding the curve of her shoulder in the darkness and following it to the crook of her neck, from there to her jawline, a long gentle graze of his fingertips. He felt her reach up to grab her hood when his fingers found its edge, felt her pull it down tightly over her face, and his lips curved into a smile. As though he could see anything anyway, or she didn't know that if he wanted to rip it off there was nothing she could do to stop him.

But that wasn't his intention. He cupped her face between both hands, hoping that it wouldn't bother her too much that his palms were sweating. He could feel her trembling under his hands and hesitated for a moment, then ducked his head and pressed his lips to her forehead through the fabric of her hood. "I _know_ you," he said quietly, staying close. "I may not know the details of your past, and I may still have a great deal more to learn out of the things you'll let me know, but if there's anyone outside of my family that I think I really know at all it's you."

He felt her fingers touch his wrist, then loop lightly around it. "Why can't you just use your powers for good?" she asked wistfully. "Do you know how much easier this would be if we could just be partners, making the streets a safer place? Does it need to be these stupid bank robberies?"

"No," he said firmly, not even taking a moment to consider. He didn't need to think about it, he knew the type of person he was well enough. "I'm not magnanimous the way you are, or I'd never have been so curious about you to begin with. I already have my work, and it doesn't involve going out every night to fight for strangers."

He heard her sigh tiredly, but she gave no other answer. She knew, he supposed, that there was no chance of changing his mind, just as he knew that she didn't like it. The tone she'd used told him that she'd probably been aware of the answer before she'd ever even asked the question.

He let the silence stretch on, not quite awkward but not really comfortable, looking out the window at the rain still pouring down. "Since you've come in this far," he said, watching a bolt of lightning flash across the sky, "would you consider spending the night so you don't need to go out in that again?" Not that she would need to with her powers, but at least it was an excuse. He felt her tense like she was about to bolt and quickly added, "In a spare room. And I wouldn't expect you to do anything but stay in it alone."

He'd had to at least try. Still it was a surprise when he heard her barely audible "...Okay."


	9. Horseshoes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title will make sense once you've checked out the FST. *g*
> 
> And, just to make sure it's clear, Equius not using his arrows is on purpose. Gamzee's the only one who uses his full typing quirk in this verse, because Gamzee's a bit weird.

Equius knew that his life had been going well for years, a person only needed to look at his company's profits since he'd taken control to know it, but for almost the first time he was honestly _feeling_ it.

If anyone had asked him in the past he would have said that he didn't consider himself a romantic. He'd had a few relationships through high school and university, but they'd been more for the rest of the world than for himself; a wealthy young man who never dated anyone at all would only lead to rumors. Honestly, there were already enough people who thought that the amount of time he spent with Nepeta meant that he wanted to do improper things to his own cousin. If he was never seen going out with anyone it would just encourage them.

But he could understand now how nothing more than being in a good relationship could make life seem brighter. It didn't matter that it was nearly completely chaste, a few light kisses and careful touches the only contact that she allowed him to have with her. It didn't matter that he still hadn't seen her face, or that it was a secret to everyone else in the world besides Nepeta and perhaps the Maid's own friend. He was happy spending time with her, and that was enough to make him happy with life.

There was only one blotch in it now, but it was made very obvious when he was reading the news that morning.

Gamzee Makara was plastered across the society section again. His latest burst of absurdity involved him arranging a surprise invasion of circus animals into the club he'd been at the night before, leading to widespread panic. As always the comments section devolved into a lengthy debate about exactly what cocktail of drugs was in his system _this_ time; it seemed that everyone who'd ever heard of him knew, or at least suspected, that it had been years since the last time he'd been seen sober. If he ever had been at all.

Equius had known Gamzee since high school. With anyone else he would have detached himself from them long ago, when it became clear to everyone that his downward spiral was never going to end. No one thought anything good of anyone he associated with, at the very least they suspected that his friends had to be junkies too just to put up with him.

But he'd held off. In part it was because the Makara family was so wealthy that Gamzee's vices would be overlooked and downplayed for longer than they would with most people as his parents did their best to cover up the worst of his excesses. It had been easier in the past, when he preferred to spend most of his time at the circus a branch of the main family ran, most people willing to chalk up the way he acted to him trying to fit in with clownishness. But as he'd gotten older his parents had insisted he spend more time in the city to learn the business he'd one day be inheriting, and that had proven to be a mistake.

And it had partially been because his family history was closer to Equius' own than anyone else he knew. The Makaras had been wealthy for as many generations as the Zahhaks. Wealthier, in truth, once part of the ruling class although those ancestors had been unpleasant enough that they tried to downplay that part of their heritage impressive though it might have sounded. And they were equally overlooked by anyone with an overly Eurocentric viewpoints when old monied families were discussed, although they were originally from northern India instead of anywhere in the Middle East.

Still, if he were entirely honest with himself, all those neat and understandable reasons really had very little to do with why he'd held onto their friendship for so long. The main reason was that Gamzee was one of the few people who seemed to sincerely view Equius as a friend instead of an impressive acquaintance. It was easy to cast people aside when it was clear that he mattered to them as little as they mattered to him, but when they actually _liked_ him? Well, it was equally easy for him to start liking them back, and a great deal harder for him to do what he knew must be done.

But Gamzee's addiction to any drug he could get his hands on had reached the point where it almost seemed like madness, his antics as the out of control heir to the Makara fortune making him a regular focus of the tabloids. Equius couldn't allow his name to remain tied to someone like that, no matter how close they had been in the past.

Unfortunately Gamzee had proven difficult to get in touch with in the weeks since Equius had come to that decision. He was always gone when Equius tried visiting him at home, never answered his phone, and didn't return any of Equius' messages. The only place he was generally available to talk was online.

Which was actually fairly usual for him, but breaking off a friendship through a chat program hardly seemed right. Still, it seemed that Gamzee was giving him no other choice.

\-- creativeTechnician [CT] began pestering terminallyCapricious [TC] \--

CT: Gamzee, do you have time to speak?   
TC: If iT IsN'T My bUsIeSt bRo.  
TC: HaVeN't HeArD fRoM yOu In FoReVeR, mOtHeRfUcKer!   
CT: Must you type like that?   
TC: LiKe WhAt? :o)   
CT: This isn't the time for your clownery.  
CT: Could you meet me somewhere?  
CT: Or answer the phone if I call?   
TC: WhY dO aLl ThAt?  
TC: We'Re TaLkInG oN a MoThErFuCkInG mIrAcLe RiGhT nOw  
TC: AlL lEtTiNg YoU tAlK tO mOtHeRfUcKeRs AnYwHeRe, AnYtImE  
TC: SaY wHaTeVeR tHe FuCk YoU wAnT tO mE rIgHt HeRe.   
CT: I think you'll find that phones do the same thing.  
CT: Would you find a webcam so we can at least have video?   
TC: NaH. i'M aLl Up In My PrIvAtE tImE nOw, DoN't WaNt AnY mOtHeRfUcKeRs LoOkInG in.  
TC: No OfFeNsE mY bRoThEr. :o)   
CT: Fine.

Equius leaned back in his seat, collecting his thoughts. He wanted to do this gently, if he could. It wasn't something he had practice with, but since Gamzee was a friend instead of just a person that Equius knew he deserved however much kindness he could offer in this situation.

CT: You know that I have always made it clear I can't remain connected to anyone who seems controlled by their vices.

He tried to continue that he'd gone on too long hoping Gamzee would turn his life around, but before he'd finished typing Gamzee cut in.

TC: WhOa WhOa WhOa, MoThErFuCkEr!  
TC: I sEe WhErE tHiS iS gOiNg  
TC: AnD iT aIn'T gOnNa HaPpEn.   
CT: That's hardly your decision to make.   
TC: AnD cAlLiNg It QuItS iSn'T jUsT yOuRs!  
TC: FrIeNdShiP's ThE bEsT mOtHeRfUcKiNg MiRaClE tHeRe Is!  
TC: NoT jUsT gOnNa LeT yOu TuRn YoUr BaCk On OuRs FoR sOmEtHiNg So FuCkInG sTuPid.

Nobody had ever attempted to fight for his friendship before. Nobody had ever cared enough to do so. He knew that he should just ignore Gamzee's protests when he'd offered nothing that would change the way things stood. Instead, with a strange feeling of stunned hope, he typed,

CT: And what do you suggest happen instead?   
TC: ReHaB mOtHeRfUcKeR. hEaRd Of It?   
CT: You would do that because of this?  
CT: Honestly?   
TC: To KeEp FrOm LoSiNg My BeSt BuDdY?  
TC: FiRsT gOoD fUcKiNg ReAsOn i'vE EvEr hEaRd! :o)  
TC: SiT bAcK aWhIlE, lEt ThOsE dOcS gEt ThEiR mIrAcLe On, YoU'Ll SeE yOu DoN't NeEd To Do ThIs ShIt.

Equius could hardly believe what he was reading. He never would have guessed that anyone would offer to make such a drastic change to their life just to keep knowing him. He suddenly guiltily wondered if that was just because he'd never given them the chance. If he'd just tried to help any of the other people he'd known over the years turn their lives around instead of turning his back on them could he have helped change them for the better? It wasn't a pleasant thought.

But at least he had a chance to try it once.

CT: Very well.  
CT: If you're able to sober up, and remain that way, nothing needs to change.  
CT: But I'll expect to hear about you entering a rehab facility before the end of the week.   
TC: I'll get right on it, buddy.  
TC: Look, you can see I'm all being serious with my serious type.  
TC: All boring straight across, not bouncing like my words're on a motherfucking trampoline.  
TC: :o)   
CT: Yes. I see.  
CT: ...  
CT: For what it's worth, I am glad that you've decided this.  
CT: I didn't look forward to losing your friendship.

Life was, indeed, good.


	10. It Runs In the Family

Aradia had a set routine that she'd followed ever since she first started her heroics, and had only had cause to break from once or twice in the years since. The her who collected the information on the nights crimes would sit down and arrange them for her before going back in time, the ones that seemed like they'd be hardest to take care of at the top trailing down to the ones she barely needed to put any effort into. The nights Equius wanted to see her he was always last, the one stop that she knew would be nothing but a chance to relax. She went into fights where she knew there'd be weapons, or a whole crowd of criminals, or anything else that could lead to major problems right away, handling them while she was still fresh for the night, taking breaks when she felt they were needed. Everything else was just the cool down; though sometimes a crime that she'd considered minor would take a surprising turn for the dangerous. usually she could handle them easily enough.

The mugging was one of her very last stops. Two attackers, but neither had weapons. A victim who'd come out of it without a single scratch. A location close enough to a major road that if either of them _was_ hiding a gun they'd be an idiot to use it when so many people were in earshot and they were in a blind alley with no way to run. And all of it happening when there was still enough light to see by. Definitely one for closing out the day.

But it started going strangely almost immediately. She kicked one of the attackers away from the girl they were menacing, but before she could make another move their apparent victim suddenly grabbed onto her arm and yelled, "Stop! They're just playing a purrtend game with me, don't hurt them!"

Aradia stayed on guard--the girl might _say_ that, but she couldn't disbelieve the police bulletins that said that her pretend game friends were about to turn on her--right up until she briefly glanced away from the muggers to look at the girl. Then she sagged. "Oh, I can't _believe_ this."

The cat-eared hood she was wearing was unmistakable, though the color was a little brighter and there was no mask attached. The playful glint in the girl's eyes and the quirk of her smile told Aradia that she knew _exactly_ what she was thinking and was just waiting for her to voice it.

No reason to drag it out. "You're Nepeta, aren't you?"

"Hee hee, he talks about me enough fur you to know that, huh?" She let go of Aradia's arm just long enough to link her own arm through it instead, and began pulling her out towards the main road at a skipping pace. "Sorry to pounce on you like this, but I wanted to finally meet my cousin's sweetie! And it was getting _obvious_ he'd never introduce me on his own, so I had to take matters into my own paws!"

"I can't believe there are two people in your family who think staging crimes to get my attention is a good idea," Aradia said with a sigh, but she allowed herself to be dragged along, only correcting their course to head towards a side road where it was less likely that they'd be seen together. She didn't know how people would react to seeing their hero apparently slacking off on the job, but thought that all-in-all it would be better just to not find out.

"Well, I know that it works after all!" Nepeta said, cheerfully brazen about what she'd done. "And I just had to meet the purrson who's gotten Equius to stop spending all his time holed up in his office or his workroom. And who gave us a game we could play together! I helped him figure out how to meet you, you know."

"He told me. You made his costume, right?"

"And gave him his secret identity name too! Well, I gave him one my clefur girlfriend thought of."

"You mean, there's another person who knows what he's been doing?" Aradia asked, not sure what she thought of that. Maybe it shouldn't matter, since she had two people who knew about their relationship too, but Sollux and Feferi still didn't know _who_ he was. They just knew that for some reason she'd gone on visiting weird super-strength guy who'd first made her figure out she was aging quickly. But the people who knew about it from Equius' end knew that the person he was with was the Maid of Time, and it was worrying enough having one other person know that secret. The only reason it had never bothered her too much was because he talked about Nepeta enough for Aradia to believe she'd never betray the things he told her in secret.

Luckily Nepeta quickly put her mind at ease. "No, no, I made it into a game for us to play when he didn't like any of the names I thought of. I don't know _why_ ; Wonderkitty is just the kind of name a lot of other supurr people use, and Mr. Mittens is completely dignified." She pouted for a moment then seemed to remember the topic. " _Anyway_ , I made it a puzzle. What type of name would you give a supervillain if they never really got to commit a crime because something always stopped them before they could even start? She thought of Null and Void because that's what his crimes would be! But Equius just went with half of it, because he thought the whole thing sounded like there was more than one of him."

"I'd always wondered where that come. I mean, it doesn't have anything to do with his powers or his costume at all so I couldn't figure it out. But that makes sense, I guess."

"But I know then he barely even _used_ it. At least Terezi can't be disappointed when she didn't ever know it was real." Nepeta rolled her eyes at her cousins antics, but it softened with a smile that grew when she glanced at Aradia. "I'm really glad you put up with him. I know he can be _so_ frustrating sometimes, but I can tell he's really happy. And it's the furst time I've ever seen him think so much about how to make somebody _else_ happy, instead of just how useful they could be."

Aradia knew that Equius could be cold when it came to other people, but... "That's not right. At the very least I know he cares about your happiness."

Nepeta laughed and shook her head. "That doesn't count! We're family! The kind of family that love each other, not like this one aunt we have who I know he'd give up all his bows and most of his horses to never see again."

Aradia had to give her that one. Family, _close_ family, was different than anyone else in the world. She knew that very well, it was why there was still a tender place inside her heart although it had gotten more bearable over the years, becoming a dull ache whenever she thought of the family she'd lost instead of a sudden sharp pain that could hit her with almost no provocation. But that wasn't a thought that she wanted to focus on too long, when she could already feel that ache starting to wake.

So she focused on something else. "Does he really think of me that much?"

"Do you _really_ need to ask that?" Nepeta asked, stopping them in their tracks to look at Aradia seriously. She'd almost been starting to think that wasn't possible. "His reputation was always the most important thing in the whole world to him, you have to have figured that out by now. But every single time he wants to see you he risks ruining it furever if you decide you're not going to play along with his game anymore."

"I... see." Aradia said. She'd honestly never considered just how much power he was putting into her hands with the way he used to let her know he had a night free, but Nepeta was right. All it would take was her deciding that she didn't want to put up with it anymore and he would end up in a horrible mess; even with the mask and gloves she doubted it would take long for someone to recognize him. If nothing else there weren't many people in the city who could afford the ridiculously expensive suits he wore, and even fewer who could afford to ruin one by getting little bits of rubble all over it.

Nepeta was walking along again, happily chattering away with some story about how she was the one who first got Equius to start learning about her that Aradia only half listened to. She already knew from Equius himself how it had started, but another viewpoint could be nice to know.

As she listened she found herself wishing that Equius had introduced them sooner, which was a stupid thing to want when _she_ was the one who did her best to keep their lives separate aside from those quiet hours of the night they could spend together. Although she'd heard plenty of silly stories about Nepeta, she never would have imagined her as this warm friendly woman. Since they'd been raised so closely in the same family Aradia had always just expected that she'd have the personality of a slightly more easy-going Equius who loved cats instead of horses.

Though she hadn't really thought badly of Equius in ages, it was even easier to think of him fondly knowing that _this_ was the cousin that he adored so much.

And besides that, it was fun to listen to gossip about someone she knew and it might have been worth meeting her sooner just for that. Sometimes Feferi would talk to her about what was going on with everyone from her old school, but it didn't feel the same anymore. Just the few years the calendar told her had passed since the last time she'd talked to anyone she knew there besides Sollux and Feferi would have been enough to make her feel detached from them, and her own personal clock made that gap so much longer.

It was just... normal, in a way that few things in her life had been in a long time.

But she couldn't allow herself to stay caught up in it. As nice as talking to Nepeta had been she still hadn't reached the end of her night, and she couldn't keep wasting time relaxing when there were still crimes left to stop.

She waited until the story tapered to a close then pulled her arm away from Nepeta more slowly than she needed to. It was the first time she'd ever not wanted to excuse herself after a rescue, no matter how friendly some of the people she'd helped had been. What was it about this family that made her willing to stick around after their silly fake crimes?

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I really should go. There are still people who need saving and evils that need thwarting before I'm done for the night."

Nepeta's eyes went wide and excited. "Oh, of course! I can't keep keeping the Maid of Time from her supurrheroic duty! But can you do one thing for me furst?"

"Well, maybe. That's not the type of question someone with a secret identity can just say 'yes' to without getting more details," Aradia said, smiling to try and make it clear that she didn't really think Nepeta was trying to sneak her identity out of her.

Aradia had assumed the request would have something to do with Equius. She did not expect to have a pen and a glossy print of one of the snapshots someone had caught of her shoved under her nose. Nepeta beamed at her guilelessly and said, "Could I have an autograph, please?"


	11. A Little Too Late

Three people had been murdered in the night.

Aradia stared at the news in shock as the details were revealed, each more gruesome than the last. She'd had to deal with murders before--attempted murders, once she was through--but never anything like this. Each of the bodies had been mutilated so badly that identification would have been impossible if they hadn't had ID on them, one of them happening just off the busiest street in town without a single person noticing. Nothing had been stolen from any of the victims as far as the police could tell, and there was no apparent connection between them.

The sensationalist media was already trying to spin it into a serial killer stalking the streets of Alternia City, ignoring that 'serial killer' had an actual definition that wasn't just a scary word for murderer. Not that Aradia had known that either until knowing things about crimes had become part of her job, but _she'd_ been thirteen back then. She thought that was a pretty good excuse.

The police reports Sollux was able to hack into were unsurprisingly much more down-to-earth. They were still searching for some kind of connection, for a start mostly trying to find out if any of them had gotten into debt to any shady characters. It had been a long time since the mobs had any real presence in Alternia, so long ago that Aradia had never needed to deal with them, but it was fairly well known that at least a couple members of the old Midnight Crew had been sly enough in their crimes to avoid prison and still lived in the city. The Maid of Time had even awkwardly crossed paths with Diamonds Droog a couple of times when doing a patrol for any crimes that had gone unreported at the end of her nights. She always felt like she probably should be doing something other than rushing by without meeting his eyes, but she couldn't just hassle a man for doing nothing more than walking down the street he lived on no matter who he was.

At least if he _was_ still up to anything those times were probably just as awkward for him, wondering if she was about to take him to task for some crime she'd stumbled onto.

But looking at the facts, and even more damningly at the terrible photos that could only be found within the police department's computers, Aradia didn't really think it had anything to do with them. They had a style, one she'd learned early on just in case they ever _did_ start messing with her city again, and the murders just didn't fit it. They were brutal, yes, but if one of them kept attacking a body after it was dead it was because they got so caught up in what they were doing that they didn't realize they could stop. A body might very well end up with a dozen extra bullet holes in it, but it wouldn't be absolutely pulverized the way the murder victims were.

Aside from that, she was just as clueless as anyone else trying to work out who the murderer might be or why they chose their victims. So it was lucky that neither of those things mattered to her. All that mattered were the estimated times of death.

The range of which turned out to be a good half-hour off for the first victim, but that was one thing that would never be a problem for her. She let herself stay loose from the timeline, drifting back and forth until the cheerful brassy music of that section of the city was pierced by a sudden dissonant chord and put herself down right at that moment.

She went into the fight not expecting to have any real problems with the murderer. They might be a person capable of doing terrible things, but they must have caught all their victims off-guard when this time she'd be the one with the advantage. None of the victims had been shot and guns were the only weapons she _really_ worried about, the kind she thought most likely to kill her so quickly that she wouldn't have time to save her past self if someone got a lucky shot. In a close-combat fight she'd reached the point where she practically felt safe.

Maybe she should have worried that she was getting too cocky.

The murderer came out of nowhere at almost the same instant that she did, but the music's forewarning that he would be almost on top of her kept her from being startled. She took him down with a crack of her whip, looping it around his leg and pulling it tight. He was on the ground well before he had a chance to make a killing strike.

"Run," she told the man he'd been after, not taking her eyes off the figure on the ground. "As fast as you can to somewhere with people around. You don't want to get near him."

Luckily he listened to her. There were a depressing amount of people who wouldn't, apparently thinking that getting to watch their local superhero in action was worth risking their lives over. Or maybe they just trusted that she'd never let them get hurt, which while sweet, and true, was so mind-bogglingly stupid that she didn't know how they'd been able to live to adulthood.

But she didn't have much time to feel good he'd gotten away safely. He'd only gotten a few yards when the murderer grabbed her whip and _pulled_ , yanking it straight out of her hands. Nobody besides Equius, the first time they'd met, had ever done that before, and maybe surprise stunned her for an instant but it wouldn't even have mattered if the move hadn't thrown her off guard at all.

One instant he was on the ground, the next on his feet then suddenly behind her, moving faster than she would have thought possible. She barely had enough time to realize that he _had_ to have powers of his own to be that quick when some blunt object suddenly slammed into her back with such force that she could feel something cracking inside of her.

And then she was a few seconds back in time, slamming her palm into his elbow to throw off his strike before it could hit the other her standing there, then dropping to kick him as hard as she could in the kneecap though agony flared through her back with the movement.

Which was very hard indeed. She smiled grimly as this time she heard the crack, sure that the fight was as good as hers if she'd managed to break his knee. But _again_ he was up too fast for anyone normal, not even seeming to notice any pain as he whirled towards her and brought down his weapon, a brightly painted club she could now see, on her head.

She managed to partially dodge, the hit just glancing her skull instead of coming down right in the center of it, but again bone crunched and she knew that soon enough the wound would prove fatal. She was the one who'd changed the timeline, after all, the one who wasn't allowed to live.

But as long as there was life left in her she'd do her best to help, so she kept herself between her other self and the murderer.

Or where the murderer had been. He was already gone, vanishing as quickly as he'd appeared though she spun in circles trying to spot him. Maybe the injury had bothered him more than he'd shown and he took off to heal, or maybe he just didn't like having prey that fought back. She _hoped_ it was something like that, and he wasn't just hiding in the shadows somewhere watching them for a chance to strike. The main reassurance she had was that with his speed he _constantly_ had a chance to strike, he didn't need to wait when he could be behind one of them in seconds.

But she didn't want to stick around to sure. "Get out of here," she gasped to her other self. "Can't fight him yet, we need a plan." It was a pretty pointless thing to say, she would have been able to tell that just by watching, but being able to pull some advice from the fight that would cost her her life made her feel a little better about the dying part of that.

Though not by much. The pain in her back she would have been able to stand, but the pain in her head she _hated_. It reminded her too much of her first death, the one that every one of her shared, the sharp crack and the staggering pain that pulled her off into nothingness.

The memory made her miss her mother like she hadn't in ages. She wanted the comfort of her, wanted to be cradled in her arms and have her stroke the parts of her hair that weren't quickly becoming bloodsoaked. She wanted somebody she loved to be with her when she died, to help make both the pain in her head and the pain of her memories more bearable.

That was the thought she took with her into the melody of time and the one still in her mind when she came out, not in the sea where she'd meant to go but directly in front of Equius in his main room.

His look of startled happiness made her feel like her throat was closing up, knowing that it wouldn't last for long. Sure enough even as he started to offer a greeting it turned into a choking sound just a syllable in, his expression shifting to horror as he came close enough to notice the blood that had seeped through her hood, dying it a darker shade of red and making the fabric cling to her scalp. How cruel could she be to him, coming to see him of her own whim instead of because he put his fist through a bank wall for the first time because of something like _this_?

"Why am I here?" she asked, to the world in general more than him, and she could hear the threat of tears in her voice because even as she spoke she realized. Realized why she'd appear there instead of in the cold waters when she'd been aching for comfort, her mind still to stuck reeling in shock over what had happened to really focus on the sea. Why the place she unconsciously had most wanted to be, the place she'd felt she might find solace as she died, was with him.

And she realized that it was _horrible_ that she was the one who got to understand it, when that understanding was about to die with her.

He quickly crossed the remaining distance between them and pushed her hood off without asking. And she let it happen without trying to stop him. He didn't even seem to notice that her face was bare to him for the first time, all his focus was on pushing through her hair to try and find the spot where she was injured. When he pulled his hand away again it was covered in her blood and he moaned lowly at the sight of it. Aradia would never have even though he could make such a sound.

"I'll call for an ambu-- no, I'll have them send a helicopter," he said, already pulling a cellphone from his pocket. "You'll have the best medical care in the--"

"No," she said, gently plucking the phone from his hands before he had time to think of using his strength to hold on more tightly. "I'm so sorry, but I'm going to die here and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

"You will not," he said, shaking his head in denial. "A successful person does not give up that easily. _You_ will not give up that easily. This isn't the end of you."

"Who said anything about it being the end? Equius, you know how often I change the past. Why do you think there aren't hundreds of copies of me running around from all those timelines that don't exist?" She tried to force a smile for him, but flinched when even that small motion sent a new flash of pain through her head. "I never told you that you didn't work out how my powers work _quite_ as well as you thought."

She watched the understanding dawn in his eyes, but instead of looking relieved his expression became more stricken than ever. " _This_ is what you do for the city. This... every night, it must be for you to know where to go." He reached out towards her but stopped before he made contact, his hands hovering in the air around her like he was afraid he'd only hurt her worse by touching her. "They aren't worth it. _No one_ in the city is worth sacrificing yourself for. You are better than every one of them combined."

"There's _no_ sacrifice," she said as firmly as she could, though it was becoming harder to focus on the words. She sank slowly to the floor, trying to free herself from at least a little of the pain; she'd made herself stand as long as she could, but the pain in her head and the pain in her back combined were just too much to bear. He followed her straight down to the floor. "I'll still be out there in the world, and I'll never even have felt all this pain. I'll be... Equius, listen to me carefully." She cupped his face between his hands, forcing him to look at her instead of the blood oozing out of her. His eyes widened when they met hers; maybe he'd finally realized exactly what he was seeing. " _Aradia_ will still come running whenever she sees you in the news."

Maybe it wasn't fair to tell him when she wouldn't be the one who needed to deal with any consequences, but she wanted to too much to hold back. She was going to be the one who died beside him, didn't she deserve to at least get to see the look on his face when he realized that she'd finally given him the key to all the things about herself she'd kept hidden? It wasn't her fault that any other hers out there were still too dense to realize they wanted to see it.

"Aradia," he breathed and finally wrapped her in his arms, the comforting embrace she'd longed for even if it wasn't from her mother. It didn't even matter that the new pressure on her wounded back forced her to choke back a scream before even a peep of it could be heard and make him feel worse for unknowingly hurting her. She was right where she wanted to be.

So it was a bit of a surprise when she felt the tears start streaming down her face as her consciousness slowly started to ebb away.


	12. A Patch of Brightness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this story by DottedLine.

It was hard for Aradia to make herself smile at the rest of her stops that night, though she knew she had to. The Maid of Time was known for always having a friendly word for the people she saved, and if she looked much less cheerful than usual it wouldn't take long for the local rumor mill to start wondering what had happened that was bad enough to get her down. Once just her having a cold had been enough to set off some bizarre gossip that she looked more pale and shaky than usual because she was dealing with some horrible secret crisis that only superheroes were in on but still taking time to watch over her own citizens. That had been annoying enough to settle, but now there really _was_ something wrong and she just didn't want to put up with dumb rumors on top of it.

It was awful to think that the murderer was still out there, and not only was she no closer to knowing who he was than before but now she knew that she'd have a tough time stopping him. The one happy thought she was able to cling to was that at least she'd been able to save _one_ of his victims from that night. Hopefully all of them, if the injury her other self had done to his knee had been bad enough to make him give up for the night.

That happy thought was crushed as soon as saw the top headline the next morning. She hadn't saved the other two victims. She hadn't even saved the _first_ ; he'd still been murdered, it just happened in a location a few blocks away from the first time. Even worse, the murderer had apparently been feeling vindictive about being interrupted; the description of what had been done to the body was even more gruesome than it had been the first time around.

But that wasn't the only change to the story, other details had gotten mixed in that only she knew for a fact were from a different one entirely.

Police suspected that the murderer was a man with superstrength who was seen by security cameras breaking into a local bank that same night. All of the murders had happened fairly close to the bank, and all could have potentially happened not long after the break-in given the ranges of their estimated times of death. Their theory was that each of the victims had spotted him with his stolen loot while he tried to make his get-away, and had been killed to stop them from talking. Maybe it wasn't even that, maybe he'd just pushed past them on his way and with his power that alone had been enough to destroy them. He would have had to take a strange path to meet them all, but if he'd panicked after the first death he might have gotten himself turned around.

They liked that idea, Aradia could tell. If it was a man with superstrength than the mutilation of the bodies wasn't a sign of a deranged lunatic, it was just what happened when you hit someone if you were _that_ strong.

And, though nobody said it in so many words, if it was a man with superstrength it would be primarily _her_ problem, no one else's. They would go on investigating to the best of their ability, of course, but everybody would expect her to be the one who brought him down.

It was the first time she'd ever seen a change that wasn't directly caused by her, and she wondered what on earth could have lead to it. The new murder site _was_ a tiny bit closer to the Zahhak Enterprises tower, maybe he or Nepeta had somehow come across it that night? Knowing what they did about how she worked they might have thought that it being there meant it wasn't discovered and reported on until after she'd gotten her list of targets for that night and wanted to make sure she heard about it. She couldn't think of any other possibility.

Ever since she'd first realized how fast she was aging she'd made it a rule for herself never to go back to a night a second time if some other crime that happened during it was reported later. Not unless it was something so horrible that stopping it was worth shaving a little extra time off her lifespan, and that had never happened that she could remember. Of course, she _wouldn't_ remember if the her from the timeline where it was discovered just quickly took care of it herself before the world disposed of her, instead of passing the news along.

But that wouldn't work if she went back again this time, and she already knew she'd be making an exception when it was Equius' future at stake. If her time ran out and she was suddenly killed mid-conversation it would be a terrible thing to do to him, but if she managed to excuse herself before that could happen he would expect her primary self to remember a conversation she'd never had and that wouldn't work either. She'd need to catch herself in the night and pass the word on.

It was incredibly tempting to go back to the very start of the night again and fill herself in on what she'd learned about the killer, but she knew that she couldn't. The man was too dangerous, she couldn't risk getting herself killed for real if she tried fighting differently and it turned out to be a change for the worse.

That didn't leave many other options. She had to talk to herself before he broke into the bank and placed them into that timeline, and that happened not long after her encounter with the murderer. After a little thought she decided that the easiest choice would be to jump to immediately after the fight, where she'd taken a moment to collect herself before moving on after her injured self had left her. It was the surest time they had of not being overheard by anyone.

"Equius wants to see us tonight now," she told herself. "The timestamp on the first camera catches him in the bank twenty-three minutes from now." She knew that she didn't need to say anything more. She was probably happy to hear it; at least it would be something to look forward to at the end of the night. Even if he hadn't decided to call for her maybe, just maybe, she would have gone to his place that day anyway. She never had on her own impulse before, but there was no where better than his home for her to clear her head and rest until she felt up to facing the world again, and after that night she could use it.

"Why would that change?" her other self asked.

"I don't have a clue. At least you're the one who gets to find out, I'm going to die curious about it," she said, then winced a little as she realized an instant too late that it really wasn't the night for black humor. At least she didn't need to deal with the awkwardness; it was time for her to go.

It was the most tiring night the Aradia left behind could remember having in all her time crimefighting, the rest of the fights themselves no harder than usual but the effort to keep a smile on her face just draining. At least she knew there'd be a bright spot at the end of it, the chance to curl up on an incredibly comfortable couch and vent about what had gone on.

And maybe to see if some type of super-fast combat robot that could give her back up was a thing that was possible.

But the bright spot she'd been looking forward to abruptly went dim when she finally reached the rooftop. Her first sign that something was wrong was that he was kneeling down, his back to her and his body curled over something, when ever since he'd learned where she appeared he'd always stood watching that spot as he waited for her.

The second sign, following an instant later, was recognizing the red of her own costume and realizing exactly what he was curled around.

Even though she'd known that her own intervention was the only thing that ever changed the events of a night, she hadn't imagined anything like this. All her thoughts when she tried to think of why he might have changed his plans for the night had revolved around the murderer and his first victim, on working out how their changed paths might have crossed his.

She walked slowly towards him, examining them both. He was holding her body tightly to him, but it was plain to see that in spite of whatever tumultuous state his emotions had to be in he was still having care with her; there wasn't a single fresh injury on her body that hadn't been caused by the murderer, when all it would have taken was his control slipping an instant for some part of her to become pulp. His face was hidden in her hair, but when she crouched down beside him and gently put her hand on his shoulder he looked up at her. She winced at the sight of her blood smeared across his skin, but he didn't even seem aware of it.

"Aradia," he croaked, and her heart stopped.

But then, her stomach twisting in her the entire time, she slowly reached up and pushed back her hood. There wasn't any point to it anymore when she could see that he'd already seen her other self's face, and if he knew her name too than she must have decided there was no more need for hiding.

He gently touched her cheek, looking briefly ill when his hand left a streak of blood on her own face. He looked back and forth between her and her dead self, like he was reassuring herself that she was really there safe and whole, then said, "This can't happen every night."

She decided to take it as a question instead of an attempt at a command. It wasn't the time to get into a fight over something like that. "It does," she admitted. "Sometimes more than once, if I'm hurt so badly that I need to prevent it. Like this time." She looked at her corpse again, hesitantly reaching out to touch her own hand. She was surprised to feel it was still warm, though whether that was because she hadn't yet lost her own heat or he'd been holding her so close that he'd given her his she couldn't say. "I barely ever see them. Usually I take myself away."

"Aradia, _please_ ," he said harshly, apparently unwilling to let her get away with deliberately misunderstanding. "You shouldn't do this. You should never need to die."

"But I already have. Equius, I've been basically a zombie since before you ever even heard of me." Aradia took a deep breath and looked up at the wide open sky above them. The Zahhak tower was the tallest building in the city, so high that from the top it almost seemed possible to make out more than a few of the brightest stars through her city's smog and light pollution. There was no way for anyone to overhear her there. There was no reason left to hide anything from him.

So she leaned against his shoulder and, her voice soft, began to tell him everything. Her death and inexplicable resurrection on the altar. Letting the world think she'd gone missing. How hard she'd trained, how incredibly important it had been to her to use what had happened to make the world a better place, why that made her so willing to let herself die for it. All the secrets she'd been keeping from him for years fell away one at a time until there was only one left. She didn't tell him exactly _why_ she'd hidden herself away; no reason to let him know how old the calendar claimed she should be when her actual age was rapidly catching up to his.

She was so caught up in telling him everything she could think of that might matter, everything that she _should_ have told him years before if their relationship could have progressed along anything like a normal path, that she hardly even noticed herself phasing into what was currently most important. The killer, how incredibly fast he'd been, how she hadn't been able to get a good look at his face even when he was right beside her. How horrible she felt for leaving those poor people to die because she knew she couldn't beat him yet.

How she was sure that if he hadn't decided to go after his original prey she really would have died that night.

He let completely go of her body at last to wrap his arms around her living self, and she allowed herself to accept the comfort of his embrace for a moment before reaching out to grab her corpse's shoulder. "I'm taking her where she belongs. She shouldn't stay here." She left with the body before had any chance to protest, if he'd even wanted to. It was better that way, she thought, giving him a tiny bit of time alone to process everything she'd told him before he needed to respond to it.

Anyway, if she'd let him respond she wouldn't have been surprised if he tried to convince her to let him give her a proper burial, and she didn't think even he was rich enough to get away with mysteriously having a young woman's battered corpse in his penthouse.

The middle of the ocean was one of the few places where her powers would always hold her in the air if she was her primary self, protecting her from the threats of hypothermia and drowning. She let her body drop into the waves then crouched down in midair to dip her hands into the frigidly cold waters and let them wash away her dead self's blood. She remembered to scrub her wet hand against her cheek to get the streak he'd left there so he didn't need to see it again, and then went back to see what he had to say.

"You must be tired," he said instead of anything related to her story when she reappeared, though he looked even wearier than she felt. "Would you like to stay here tonight?"

"O-of course!" she said, a little caught off guard by him letting the subject drop when she'd been prepared for some kind of reaction. She followed him to the door leading to the stairs then stopped, reaching out to touch his arm. "Are you really not going to ask about any of the stuff I said?"

He paused for a moment, ducking his head so his hair fell around his face and hid his profile from her, then turned to look at her. There was a soft look in his eyes beneath the sadness that had been there since she'd arrived. "I am glad, very glad, that you've finally decided to trust me with the details of your life outside of being the Maid of Time. But I think I've made it clear before that I already know you, even if I didn't know your name. I don't need to ask questions about who you are."

That, more than anything, decided her course for the rest of the night.

He escorted her to the room she'd used so many times before, where they'd always parted for the night without ever doing anything more than sharing a good night kiss, but she didn't stop there. Her stomach squirming even worse than it had when she'd lowered her hood she went on to the door she knew was his but had never been behind before. She'd kept herself apart from him for so long, but there was no point to it anymore.

She didn't _want_ to anymore.

She opened the door then looked back towards him and was surprised to see him still standing outside her room, staring at her with a look on his face that seemed as nervous as she felt. She could hardly believe it; he'd always been the one who seemed to have at least some idea what he was doing as their relationship progressed, the one with memories of past romances to draw on while she was fumbling through her first relationship with the added complication of it being so bizarre. With emotional matters he could be awkward, unsurprising when Nepeta had let her know his other relationships had been all about his own reputation, but with the physical he had the advantage on her. Seeing _him_ look that way made her feel more jittery than ever about what she was doing, but she steeled her nerve and went back to take him by the hand. "Come on," she said gently.

She didn't stop when the entered they bedroom, leading him further on through an open door that she could see lead into the master bathroom. "Sit," she told him, nudging him towards the rim of the tub. His nervous expression was fading into bemusement. "I... she turned you into a mess."

She turned on the tap to get the warm water running and poked around until she found a washcloth to soak, then started washing the blood from his face and hands. She wiped it away in careful slow swipes, taking her time to make sure every bit of skin she could see was cleaned, then turned her attention elsewhere.

His shirt was obviously ruined, a good half of the front soaked, so she started to unbutton it. "I'm going to take this and burn it in the morning," she told him, her eyes staying fixed on the skin that was slowly being revealed. "I don't care how much you think Aurthour will do anything to make your life easier, anyone seeing these clothes would think _you_ were the murderer and you can't put him in that position."

"Understood," he said, his voice hoarser than usual as she pushed the shirt off his shoulders. For a moment her eyes flickered up to his, a smile twitching over her lips when she saw the sweat beading on his forehead, then she turned her attention back to where it had been.

The blood had oozed through the fabric to the skin below, so she took the washcloth to that. She was a little surprised by his scattering of chest hair and the trail that disappeared under the waistband of his slacks, she wouldn't have expected it of a man who took such care to look neat and respectable when he was fully dressed. She was surprised again when at a swipe of the washcloth one of his nipples began to harden. She repeated the move to see if it would keep it up, then grazed her thumb around it, smiling when she heard him hiss in a sharp breath of air.

Somehow she'd always thought that was just a girl thing. Men's nipples didn't work for feeding babies, so why would they work for anything else?

When his chest was clean her gaze dropped further. His pants were bloody too where her body had been sprawled in his lap. She rested her hand on his knee then straightened, trembling a little as she met his eyes and moved in close. When her mouth was just a breath away from his she murmured, "I'll need to burn these too," and leaned in to kiss as she reached for the button of his slacks.

Only for him to grab her hand and stop her.

She pulled back, her heart pounding, her eyes wide. "Did I do something wrong?" she asked. "God, I didn't--"

"No," he cut her off quickly before she would work herself even more worried that she'd managed to screw up somehow. "I need you to know something before this goes any further. I've never done this before."

"You think I have?" she asked, a relieved laugh escaping her before she could stop it. "I'd have thought when I didn't let you kiss me on the mouth until the seventh time I slept over it would have been a sign I've never been involved with someone like this before."

"That isn't what I meant. This is important, Aradia." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his face growing even more shiny with sweat, then haltingly, said, "I have never _trusted_ myself to... to be in an... overly intimate position with anyone. If I were to forget myself in, ah, in the heat of the moment and my control over my strength slipped it would be... horrible." He took both her hands in his and met her eyes again, the hesitation in his tone falling away as he said with conviction, "I'm not afraid of that with you. I could _never_ hurt you, I'm sure of it. But I need to know that you are as well, that you're doing this because you trust me not to hurt you and aren't just forgetting my strength in the moment only to be terrified later when you realize how dangerous this might have been."

Her mind suddenly flashed back to her body in his arms, still just as whole as it had been when it reached him, and her eyes stung even as a smile stretched across her face. "Of course I know that. I've known it for ages." She wrapped her arms around his neck and bumped her forehead against his. "I haven't been afraid of your strength since the first time we met."

When she reached for his fly again he didn't stop her, raising his hips so she could pull off his slacks and underwear in one move. The blood had soaked through here as well and for the moment she stayed focused on that, her cheeks flushing hotter and hotter even though she kept her eyes fixed on the red streaks on his dark thighs as she slowly wiped them away. It wasn't until they were fully clean that she finally raised her gaze a little higher.

She and Sollux had gone skinny dipping together once, back when they were small enough for it to be entirely innocent. That had been the first and last time that she'd seen a real life penis, her only reference to what they looked like.

Equius' was very different than those dim memories. Larger, as anyone past puberty would be, and darker of course. Hair, small tight curls instead of the wispier waves between her own legs. The heavy sack of his testicles.

And the fact that he was hard. That was a big difference.

She swallowed, then looked up and said in as steady a tone as she could managed, "I think you're clean enough for us to move to the bedroom now."

Strangely, it was actually beginning to feel a little comforting that he was back to looking as nervous as she was, maybe even more so. Okay, so neither of them were completely sure what they were doing, but _neither of them_ were completely sure what they were doing. If their first time together turned out to be a complete disaster it would be on both their heads, not just her own lack of experience. And they could work out how to make it better together.

She unfastened her cloak and let it fall to the ground as she walked towards the bed but Equius stopped her from removing anymore of her own clothing. "You have taken care of me," he said. "I'll be happy to return the favor."

Though he didn't say anything about it she realized at once that he must have thought about how to remove her costume before, because he started at exactly the right place; unlacing her wrist guards to free her sleeves. He pulled off her gloves, tugging one finger free at a time, then paused and stared at her bare hands like they were some new robot he was trying to figure out the workings of. "I've never seen your hands before," he told her quietly.

"You've never seen anything but my chin before," she said with a smile, "and I've got nicer looking parts."

"All of you is nice looking," he said, but took the hint and pulled up her shirt. He found a bulletproof vest he'd bought her a few years before instead of much more skin, but looked pleased with just that. "I'm glad that you've been wearing this."

"Are you surprised? Anything that makes bullets a little less dangerous is a good thing." she said, rolling her eyes at him then shucking off the vest herself, remembering a second too late that beneath she was wearing the sweaty sports bra that she'd spent the night fighting in. Too late to do anything about that; she _could_ go tell herself earlier in the night to take a shower and put on nice undies before going to see him, but for the first time she found herself unwilling to sacrifice herself to make things a little better for another her.

He didn't seem to mind anyway. He looked at her like he didn't even notice a single one of her imperfections; not that she needed to scrub herself down, not that she had gathered more than a few scars over the years, not even her obvious laziness about shaving her armpits when no one else ever saw them.

Her shoes and leggings came off more quickly, Equius apparently beginning to lose patience. That was okay, so was she.

When she was down to just her underwear he gazed at her a long moment then quickly said, "Just a moment, I need--" and almost fell off the bed in his haste to twist around and get at his nightstand drawer. He came up with a box of condoms, and at the questioning look she gave him for having them, considering what they'd just discussed, he coughed and said, "Since you began staying here so often I have always at least... _hoped_. And we couldn't afford to ever be caught up in the moment with nothing prepared. I'll ask Nepeta if she can get you the morning after pill tomorrow, and before next time we'll see about getting you birth control. I mean... that is... if you intend for there to be a next time."

"After all this time, do you really think I'd just be using you for a one-night stand?" she asked, swatting his arm lightly. "But aren't you being a little overly paranoid?"

"No," he said, absolute conviction in his voice. "You must _never_ become pregnant by me, Aradia. If the child were to inherit my mutation, if, because of me, you were--" he shuddered suddenly and clutched her to him, burying his face in her hair, kissing her temple. "This is not the time to talk about it."

"Of course," she said, a little concerned with his change in mood. "We have better things to do anyway, don't we?"

He gave her one more squeeze then said, "Yes," and surprised her by twisting them both around and lying back so she was sitting over him. "I meant what I said about not hurting you, but I think this way would still be safer, just in case. If that would be okay with you."

"We'll find out, won't we?" She thanked goodness that she'd at least finished eighth grade before being forced to drop out of school, so she'd gotten the sex ed class that had gone with it. It had been years since then, but with help from a quick glance over the directions on the box she was able to roll a condom on from him without real trouble, gasping softly when he unexpectedly twitched in her hand.

Then she shifted herself a little higher up his body, and carefully lowered herself onto him.

She'd expected pain, but it was really nothing. She'd been stabbed before, been punched in the stomach hard enough to make her throw up, had a bullet graze her shoulder. In comparison she felt nothing worse than a slight sting.

She watched Equius' face as she settled on him as deeply as she could. His eyes had closed tightly, his breath coming in deep controlled gasps. They'd barely begun but there was already a sheen of sweat covering his skin, making her hands slip slightly when she settled them on his chest. He clenched her thighs, but true to his word there was no danger in his touch, he held her no more tightly than any normal person could have.

She began to move, slowly rolling her hips as she tried to find a rhythm that felt natural. Equius groaned then forced his eyes open, one of his hands sliding upward. She gasped and bucked into it when it settled between her thighs, his thumb circling her clit. She wouldn't have expected another person's touch to feel some much different, more intense, than her own, but maybe it was just that it was _Equius'_ touch.

Aradia picked up her pace, chasing the feeling he was sparking in her. It seemed that she hadn't needed to worry about whether her lack of experience would mess everything up after all; her body seemed to know what it was doing, working its way to a tempo that made the pleasure roll through her almost on its own.

"Aradia," he gasped, "Aradia," and whatever control he'd held over himself, keeping his body almost still so there'd be no risk at all of him hurting her, seemed to snap. His strength was still kept completely in check but he began rolling his hips to meet her movements, grunting and moaning enough that it almost made her giggle except she knew that she'd heard herself making some strange noises too.

It was over not long after. He thrust hard upward then went almost still, his whole body seeming to twitch and his eyes squeezing closed once more. But even then he didn't forget her, his hand continuing to move between her legs though for a few moments it did so more randomly than the rhythm it had kept up before. He didn't stop until she came with a long low moan, her hands clutching his shoulders tightly enough to leave deep fingernail grooves in his skin. She wanted just to curl up on him where she was, but forced herself to roll to the side so he could dispose of the condom.

They enjoyed the afterglow in silence for several peaceful minutes, his hand tracing light circles in the small of her back, but when he opened his mouth to speak it wasn't to say 'That was wonderful', or 'You were great', or any of the kinds of complimentary things fictional people always seemed to say afterwards. It didn't matter to her; she'd been there, she already knew it was wonderful.

Instead he quietly said, "I'll join you in your hunt for this killer, if you'll allow me enough time to have a costume put together that makes a better disguise than Nepeta's spare hood."

She craned her head back to try and look at him, but the lights had been switched off and his face was in shadows. She supposed she was getting a taste of what it had been like for him for the last few years. "I thought that once upon a time somebody told me you weren't magnanimous."

"I'm still not. I'm not offering this for the city, Aradia, only to protect you. I have another offer too." He looped his arm around her waist, pulling her more closely to him, and rested his cheek against her hair. "If you ever feel tired of living alone, you should know that you're free to stay here whenever you'd like. In the other room, if you want. ...Forever, if you want."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing her eyes as she let herself relax against him. "I just might do that, one of these days."


	13. A Mega Crossover Event!

Aradia had expected the murderer to strike again quickly after that first night but instead he seemed to vanish as suddenly as he'd appeared, the streets as safe as they'd ever been for the next several nights. Maybe the injury her other self had given him really was bothering him enough that after killing those three he decided to give it time to heal. Or maybe the people who thought he must have just had some grudge against those three and wouldn't hurt anyone else were right, but she didn't think so. She hadn't gotten a clear look at his face, but she _had_ gotten a glimpse of his smile and it was the grin of someone who really enjoyed what he was doing. She didn't think someone who was just coldly chasing after people he thought had done him wrong would have looked like that.

And apparently she wasn't the only one who thought he'd strike again. Just a few nights after the murders she was stopped during her patrolling by someone calling out "Heyyyyyyyy Maid of Time," and turned to see two other heroes on _her_ streets.

Spinneret she knew. Her own stomping ground was a few cities away but when big enough problems happened--a tornado once, a train going off the rails another time, any tragedies where multiple heroes were welcome--their areas would expand to cross each other's. Aradia didn't really _like_ the woman, she was a reformed villain and even though she _seemed_ to have genuinely turned her life around Aradia thought her methods were still more sadistic than necessary, but she knew that she did good work.

The boy with her was someone Aradia had never seen before. Just from the way he looked he seemed like an incredibly strange choice of companion for Spinneret. He was smiling brightly at the world in general, gawking at the buildings around them like he was there as a tourist instead of a hero, and just looked like someone who had to be too nice to hang around a woman with a few murders under her belt.

Spinneret was posing under a streetlight, her hair and the tails of her greatcoat blowing dramatically back by the wind. Which was odd, since Aradia couldn't actually _feel_ any wind. She hoped that Spinneret wasn't manipulating her mind to make her see things; she honestly wouldn't put it past her to use her powers on people to make herself look more cool in their eyes, and though it'd be a harmless trick it would also be really annoying.

"We were soooooooo worried. Thought you might be dead or something!" Spinneret said mockingly. "Three murders on your watch and not even a tiny little peep out of you that you're on the trail of the killer? But it looks like you're just off your game instead! Good thing we're here to take over!"

"Come on, you said we'd be friendly to her Spinneret!" the boy said, paping her lightly on the head. "We're not trying to take over, Miss Maid of Time, we just thought the murderer would get caught quicker if more people looked. And it'll be like an awesome superhero team up..."

" _Breath_ "

"...except we can't actually team up or you'd get some of the credit when we caught him," the boy, Breath apparently, finished cheerfully at Spinneret's chiding.

Though Spinneret had been trying to goad her, Aradia couldn't really get upset at them for being there. More people _would_ make it more likely that one of them would find the killer before he could hurt anyone else, and that was the most important thing. "Okay, but there's something you should know. I fought the killer the night of the murders. I obviously wasn't able to stop him, and he was even able to chase down the victim I thought I'd saved." She braced herself for more laughter or jokes from Spinneret, but none seemed to be coming. Though there were _many_ situations where she seemed emotionally tone-deaf, maybe even she was able to understand just how tasteless it would be for one superhero to mock another in a situation like that. "He has powers like we do. Superspeed, he'd be one place and then he'd just suddenly be right there next to me attacking. And he doesn't seem to notice pain; I'm sure I heard _something_ crunch when I kicked him in the kneecap, but it didn't effect his movement at all. Can either of you think of a villain like that?"

"Uh-oh, Breath!" Spinneret exclaimed, then snickered. "Sounds like your buddy's gone bad! Hope you feel up to playing the noble lawman who needs to fight a friend who's gone over to the dark side."

"I like being the noble lawman who helps a friend stay away from the dark side better. Like Nic Cage was for Sean Connery in _The Rock_!"

"Was that really how it went?" Aradia wondered, vaguely remembering the end of that movie as being less about redeeming him and more just letting him get away, though it had been so long that she could easily be wrong. Then she shook herself, realizing that she was letting their weird banter pull her off topic. "Does that mean you know who it might be?"

"Uh, no," Breath said, looking a little sorry he had to disappoint her. "Spinneret's just joking 'cause the only people we know with superspeed are a friend of mine and his brother, and they're _definitely_ on the side of good. And way down in Texas too, so even if they did go insane and start killing people they probably wouldn't come up here!"

"That's too bad. ...That you don't know who it could be either, I mean, not that it's not your friend! That's good." She sighed and looked between them. "You're sure you don't want to work together at all? Don't you think we should at least share information every night, so we don't waste time investigating anything the others already ruled out?"

Breath looked like he was about to accept, but Spinneret clamped her hand over his mouth before he could say anything. "God no! That would be _so_ borrrrrrrring. Keep up your own little investigation, but we'll be the winners! I'll snag the culprit in my web and we'll get all the credit for the catch. All of it!"

"Sorry," Breath said, rubbing the back of his head. "But it was nice to meet you, Miss Maid of Time! Uh, and I'm Breath, if you didn't know that. And I don't care if you get some of the credit."

"Well, you should!" Spinneret flung her arm over his shoulder and began dragging him away. She went on advising him loudly enough for Aradia to clearly hear it even as they left her behind, "You don't get ahead in this game by teaming up with any loser who can shoot fireballs or talk to animals, Breath! Which is why you've got to be grateful I let you hook up with me! The Maid back there gets it, why else do you think she's hogging this whole city to herself?"

Their voices faded away on the sound of Breath offering that maybe it was just because there wasn't anybody else around to help. As Aradia started back into her own patrol she couldn't help but wonder how on earth such a nice guy had gotten tangled up with someone like Spinneret.


	14. Research

Equius honestly _was_ aware that Aradia likely hadn't given him her name expecting him to do anything with it besides use it when speaking to her. That she'd told him what she wanted him to know of her life story, or at least what she thought was relevant. That if he was patient she'd surely tell him more in time.

But he'd been patient for close to three years. Besides, she'd probably looked up every bit of information she could find about him after their first meeting, and there was _much_ more available about him than there'd be about a normal girl in the city. If he just did a simple internet search for her he'd only be making things even. And he didn't have much else to do while waiting for his costume to be completed, too distracted by thinking about what might happen if she ran into the killer before he could be with her to be much use at work.

She hadn't given him a last name, but he doubted that there could be many girls named Aradia who'd vanished from their city. Sure enough, it wasn't hard for him to find the results he was looking for. Aradia Megido. A lovely name.

Although he thought that 'Aradia Zahhak' might flow better.

When he actually had one of the news reports open before him he realized that it rang vague bells, but when he paused a moment to think about it that made sense. Missing children stories always came up repeatedly; if he actually paid attention during them he might have recognized her years before in spite of the hood with how often they were in close contact.

She'd told him long ago that she'd gotten her powers when she was thirteen, but he never would have expected how soon her career started after that. It was more than a little unsettling to realize that even with her unusual aging she most likely couldn't have been older than fourteen in the earliest photos he'd seen of her, fifteen when he'd first become drawn to her.

He knew that there was no way he could have been able to tell. Not when all he could see of her face was the curve of her chin and her costume was loose enough to obscure her figure. He _knew_ that, but it still wasn't something anyone would want to realize.

One of the articles, which read more like an obituary in all but headline, gave her full birthday and he was able to do a little quick math with it. Even if she was willing for them to have a public relationship, under her real identity, it would still be a little under a year before it could happen. There would be enough shock and speculation when the world realized exactly who she was. If, going by her birth year, she was still a minor it would turn into an uproar even though anyone who actually knew the state's age of consent laws should realize she was past it.

But even once she was eighteen it wouldn't solve everything. They'd still need to wait a few months more. Appealing though it sounded, if he began appearing in public with her right on her birthday everyone would rightfully assume that they'd already been in a relationship and just been hiding it. In a way that would be even worse.

Even then many people would find their relationship unseemly. If they'd been thirty-eight and thirty no one in the world would have thought a thing of it, but when one of them was supposedly a teenager an eight-year age gap suddenly became much more questionable. It wasn't as though the rest of the world could know that by then the real age difference between them would only be about three years, or that in a few more it would begin widening again with their sides reversed. The only positive he could imagine was that people would hopefully notice that she didn't _look_ the age she was meant to be and would be a little more forgiving when it was obvious he couldn't possibly look at her and see a child.

All of that together should have been enough to make him back away, he was fully aware of that. All his life he'd been so careful of his reputation, kept it so spotless even by association. He'd dropped acquaintances without a second thought when he thought that was what it took for it to remain sterling. He was one of the most well-respected heirs to a fortune in the country, the one anyone could point to as an example if they wanted to prove that growing up with an abundance of wealth didn't _automatically_ lead to a wild lifestyle no matter how many of his peers made it seem otherwise. The face that he'd always presented to the world with his father's guidance to lead him was one befitting a man of his station.

That would be changed by letting the world know he was with her. Even after he did as much damage control as possible there was almost no chance at all that his reputation wouldn't be at least a little tarnished. It was unavoidable if a girl who'd been missing since she was a child suddenly reappeared on his arm.

It _should_ make him back away. Yet he found that he didn't care. Having her there would be worth it, no matter how it looked in the eyes of the world.

And, honestly, what lasting damage could it do? He'd already more than proven his strength as the head of the company in the years since he'd actively taken over, but even if he'd been completely hapless and almost run it into the ground it wouldn't matter. Zahhak Enterprises had always been privately owned and always would be, no one could force him out if they wanted some other face on the company. He tried to work nicely with the old executives to keep everything running smoothly, but when it came down to it they were all his employees and couldn't make him do anything.

If worse came to worst he could even close the company and easily live out the rest of his life on just the fortune he already had. Luckily he sincerely doubted that there would be enough of a fuss for that to be necessary, or even enough to make much of an impact on profits. _He_ might not have been badly effected, but the thousands of people working for him wouldn't have been so lucky.

Equius still believed in his father's words, still believed that it was important to make sure the world knew his worth. That would never change. But he'd already _done_ that.

He could afford to have just one thing which was only important for the sake of his own happiness and hers, without a care for the world.


	15. Hitting the Streets

Aradia couldn't help but laugh when she first saw Equius' finished costume. Although it was much more well-made than his old one--for one thing, it was an actual _costume_ instead of just his regular clothing plus a hood--the cowl still had cat ears and there were touches of fur here and there. "Somehow I thought that you'd end up less cat-themed this time."

"Unfortunately, Nepeta remains the one with sewing skills so I was more or less at her whim. And her whims will always involve cats." He picked a little at the fuzzy cuff to one of his sleeves, frowning at it with obvious distaste, then let it drop. "But she would feel upset if I were to change it."

"So you're stuck," Aradia finished for him, understanding. However much Equius might care about her, Nepeta was the one who _really_ had him whipped even if it was platonically. "But your emblem looks a little out-of-place with the whole cat thing," she added, tapping the arrow that was embroidered on his chest in bright blue thread. "What's the meaning there anyway?"

"You know that I enjoy archery," he said, shrugging like he thought that the answer should be obvious. Then he walked across the roof to collect a bow and arrow set that Aradia hadn't noticed resting beside the door, "Besides which, these are the only weapons I know how to use.

Aradia's eyebrows shot up, and she quickly grabbed the bow out of his hands. "No," she told him firmly.

"No?" he repeated. "I hardly have time to learn to fight with a whip if you're worried about us having a cohesive look."

" _No_. God, Equius, I don't care about that. We're the _heroes_ , we can't use any weapon thats entire point is to put holes in people. That's what the bad guys do!"

He looked unimpressed by her argument. "It's not as though your whip isn't also entirely capable of killing someone, Aradia. If I had been another person you might even have killed me the first time that we met."

"If you'd been another person I wouldn't have done it. I was trying to avoid a fight I wouldn't be able to win. I've barely ever seriously injured anyone with my whip, and when I have they _really_ deserved it." She pulled an arrow from their quiver, examining it. The head was a neat cone instead of the nearly flat triangles or wicked barbed things she always saw in movies, but she could easily imagine how it would punch into someone. "These aren't made to leave minor injuries."

"You've never seen me use them. I can aim to just graze the target."

"And if they move all of a sudden? Or if there's somebody standing in range of your arrow behind--"

"If you're learning a ranged weapon, they _do_ teach you to be sure of what's behind your target before you fire," he cut her off, sounding more amused that she'd think that could be an issue than annoyed that she was questioning his ability to fire an arrow without accidentally hurting an innocent passerby.

"Well, what if we're in an alley and you can't see the person two seconds away from walking in front of it because a building's blocking your view?" she asked, then sighed and scrubbed at her face with her hands. "Why are we even arguing about this? You have _superstrength_. You don't _need_ a weapon."

"Aradia, if I _were_ to use my strength against a random thug I wouldn't be able to avoid crippling them, at the very least. I was attempting to avoid that."

Aradia laughed, suddenly understanding the problem they were having. "Who ever said that I expected you to fight against random thugs?" she asked, patting him on the shoulder. "Equius, I've already taken care of all the crimes I know were going to happen tonight, and if we come across any others I can take care of them alone too. You only need to worry about fighting the murderer, and I don't think anybody's going to care if he comes in a lot worse for the wear. A horrible man who mutilates people's bodies kind of means special circumstances."

For a moment she thought he was going to continue arguing, maybe spouting some nobly infuriating line about how he couldn't just stand back and watch her fight alone even though it was the job she'd been doing for years and that he'd outright refused to help her with before then. Luckily, for his sake, he decided against it. "Very well, if that's what you think would be best. I haven't gotten to where I am today by ignoring the advice of those with more experience that I have." He left his bow and arrows in the stairwell, where they would be safe if the weather turned. Aradia could have told him that it wouldn't, but assumed he still wouldn't want to risk bird droppings.

"Ah, then I guess we can go," Aradia said, a little thrown off by how easily he'd given in but recovering fast. She tucked her hair back under her hood and pinned it in place, wordlessly cuing him to put on his masked cowl, then grabbed his hand and pulled him further onto the stairs.

He stopped her before she could go more than two steps down. "Not this way. Once we're past the floors my rooms and Nepeta's are on the guards in the security room would start seeing us on their cameras, and we can't very well let that happen. They'd begin panicking about what could have brought you there."

"Oh, of course," she said, feeling herself flush. It wasn't the type of mistake she'd usually ever make, but she was so used to thinking of those stairs as leading into a safe space where she could let down her defenses a little that it had slipped her mind that wouldn't be true in the business areas of the tower. "But I've never figured out a way to teleport anyone else. How are we supposed to get down?"

"Haven't you ever wondered how I'd get from here to the bank?" he asked, and before she could answer he'd scooped her up into his arms. "Hold onto me as tightly as you can; I can't hold you properly while I'm doing this."

She could feel what he meant by not holding her properly. His arms were supporting her under her knees and the small of her back but he wasn't really gripping her at all, his hands bent up so that if she slid forward she'd run into them but only barely coming into contact with her where she was. She followed his instructions and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, and before she even had a chance to ask what was next he'd thrown them both off the top of his seventy-story building.

Aradia didn't scream. It wasn't something that she ever allowed herself to do, because a superheroine suddenly became much less threatening if the sight of whatever horrible things someone was doing made her shriek like a small child who'd just seen a scary clown. Over the years it had gone from something she needed to force herself to hold back at times to a habit, and a sudden plunge towards the ground was the best test of that habit she'd ever had.

She didn't scream, but she _did_ gasp loudly and hold on so tightly that if she'd been thinking clearly she would have worried about strangling him; she was pretty sure that even if she was he wouldn't do anything about it, not when flexing his neck muscles hard enough to make her loosen her grip might break both her arms.

Then they landed on the roof of the bank, thin cracks spreading through the concrete under their feet but not damaging it enough for them to break through. He jumped again before she had time to get used to being on solid ground, but now that she understood what he was doing it was a little less frightening and a lot more thrilling. She wondered if their controlled fall was at all what flying was like, for those superhumans lucky enough to be able to do it instead of just hovering steadily in the air. Their next landing was on top of an office building and she could guess what their next step down would be, a real estate agency which was short enough that from there they'd probably go to the ground.

Her only remaining worry was that _he_ didn't seem to be looking around to aim for where they'd be leaping next. In fact, his head was craned back in a way that didn't look comfortable, or useful for seeing anything besides whatever was slightly above them. After a moment's thought she understood. Just like he wasn't gripping her with his hands he also wasn't allowing his chin to rest on her, not coming into contact with her in any way which used any amount of force, however slight. Not while he was using his full strength.

Sure enough, the moment that they reached street level he gently put her down then quickly started looking for any sign of injury that might be seen through her concealing costume. "Are you all right?" he asked, a note of worry in his voice even though she didn't think there was anything about her that should make him think she was hiding any pain. "You weren't hurt?"

"Of course not," she reassured him. "How could you have, Equius? You were holding me less like you were carrying me and more like you were a chair. Plus, I'm pretty sure I remember somebody promising that he could never hurt me."

He released a long heavy breath and relaxed. "I do mean that promise, but it's... difficult, in this type of situation. My control isn't exact enough to use my full strength in one part of my body and hold it back in another, it is an all or nothing situation."

"Well you were so careful you don't need to worry. Come on, E-- _Void_ , let's catch a murderer," she said, taking his hand and starting to lead him along the street before they could get any more sidetracked.

"How do you plan for us to do this? Start by look for clues to his identity at the crime sites?" he asked as they walked along.

"Not unless you have police training and never told me," she told him, a little amused that he'd even ask. There were a lot of people who thought that her work involved playing _CSI: Superpower Division,_ but she wouldn't have expected him to be one of them. "The whole way that my powers work means that I never had to learn the first thing about how to be a detective, and we don't want to mess up the crime scenes for the officers who actually know what they're doing. If they find anything out I'll let you know."

"You have ties with the police then?"

"Not exactly," she said with a laugh. "And I shouldn't go into details while we're on the street where someone could overhear The Maid of Time admitting to some not-so-heroic ways of getting information from the police computers. Does that tell you enough?"

The fabric of his cowl shifted in a way that made her guess he was raising his eyebrows in surprise. "I believe so. Then we will...?"

"Just patrol. Keep our eyes open, listen for screams. Maybe escort a few people home or wait with them for a cab if they're alone and seem afraid; even if _we_ know that the killer isn't going to strike tonight they don't, and part of this work is helping people feel safe."

"By coddling them like infants?" he asked flatly.

"Walking with someone for a few blocks is _not_ coddling them, Equius. Most people can't afford to have their own private driver to keep them off the streets when things are dangerous." She bumped against his side and rapped her fingertips against the back of his hand before turning a corner, smirking faintly as she added, "I think this should be good for you."

* * *

As nights passed Aradia started to feel vaguely guilty about how nice it felt to wander the streets with him. It was the first time they'd ever done something at all like going out together, even if they weren't actually going anywhere in particular. Heck, she'd spent more time with _Nepeta_ outside of the tower than she'd ever had a chance to with him.

There was a different feel to those nights than there had been to any she'd spent with him in the past. Being out in the world where anyone could see them, down on her streets instead of hanging around on the roof or in his rooms high above the city, made being with him feel more real than it ever had before. If she reached out to take his hand, to hold it tightly enough to feel his heat seep through both of their gloves, she wasn't _just_ holding his hand. She was letting every single person in her city know that The Maid of Time had someone that she held hands with, because all it took was one person glancing out their window towards them to set the rumor mill in motion.

And that was perfectly fine. For good or ill she'd accepted him into her life at last, and since her identity couldn't be revealed through that there was no reason to hide it. Not everyone would be happy about it, she knew--there had always been people who'd put her up on a pedestal and got ridiculously upset at any implication that their hero might not be made out of 100% pure purity, and she doubted they'd react well to those implications having actual evidence to back them--but she was okay with that too. As the Maid of Time she was willing to give a great deal for the people of her city, but Aradia Megido deserved to have at least a few things which were purely for herself.

It was the first time in a long time that she'd really considered that.

Though finding the murderer was never far from her mind on the nights they spent patrolling together, she didn't focus purely on that. On the long and winding walks they took all over Alternia, a different starting direction every night, she took the chance to teach him her city as she knew it as well. It was only fair, he'd had years to show her his world in the rooms on top of his tower. Now she finally had a chance to show him hers.

For an intelligent man who was such a major figure in Alternia City, Aradia was surprised to learn how ignorant he was about it in certain ways. He seemed to look at every alley with suspicion, even in areas where crime had been close to non-existent since before she ever started cleaning up the city. He fretted about the possibility of food poisoning when she took him to the backdoor of a restaurant where they always saved a few big bowls worth of their soup of the day for her after she'd foiled a robbery there, just because the awning out front was faded and their sign needed a fresh coat of paint. Once they were out of the area directly around his tower they only needed to take a few turns before he seemed to lose all sense of where he was in the city, lost within easy walking distance of the place he'd lived all his life.

Aradia had thought she was just joking when she'd told him that coming out with her would be good for him, but it didn't take her long to decide there'd been more truth to that then she'd thought. She soon thought that even after the murderer was captured she should keep dragging him out, maybe recruiting Nepeta's help to make sure it happened often. It wasn't right that he should know so little about her city outside of his tiny rich corner of it, not when it was his decisions about how he ran his company that shaped the lives of so many people in it.

And besides all that, in spite of all the darkness in it that she was forced to face as the Maid of Time, Aradia _loved_ her city. She wanted him to be able to see how many wonderful things there were in it, how even the most badly-lit, out-of-the-way streets could hide incredible gems if you just didn't turn your nose up at them and pass them by.

They ran into Spinneret and Breath a few times during their ambling tours of the city. The other two heroes seemed just as aimless as they were, or more so since at least Aradia had destinations that she wanted to show Equius in mind even if they had nothing to do with the murderer. Spinneret had always been an odd woman, but she seemed to become stranger than usual during those meetings.

It started out normally enough, for Spinneret, the first time they came across each other. She'd taken one look at Equius then burst out laughing. "Realized that you should start following the lead of a real _super_ hero, huh Made of Mime?" she asked through her snickers. "Saw that _I_ had a guy sidekick and just _had_ to run out and get your own so you could try to be as awesome as me?"

"Void's not my sidekick, Spinneret, he's my..." Aradia paused, trying to think of a word that would be accurate to them, but before she could find one Spinneret cut in.

"Boyfriend?" she filled in, her eyes flicking briefly downwards and making Aradia realize that she was still holding Equius' hand. For a moment she felt the urge to yank away and pretend that she hadn't been doing anything unusual, but she fought it down; letting Spinneret get under your skin was never the right response to her.

"Partner," she finished instead. It would work well enough for the time being, even if it only lasted until the killer was brought to justice. "And we'd already planned for him to join me before I ever saw the two of you."

"Suuuuuuuure you did," Spinneret taunted, stepping closer to get a better look at Equius. All at once her smirk and teasing demeanor dropped, replaced with a thoughtful frown. "Wait, do I know you from somewhere?" she asked, and for the first time ever Aradia heard what she must sound like when she was talking to someone like a normal person instead of all the sing-songy cockiness she always filled her voice with as Spinneret.

"That isn't possible," Equius told her. "I don't usually work as a hero."

"Villain?" Spinneret asked, her usual smile returning and stretching out wider than usual when Aradia flinched the tiniest bit at the word. "I've got ties there toooooooo, you know! Haven't you heard about my dark and sinister past?"

"What she means is, we're totally cool with it if you are as long as you're on the good guys side now!" Breath added. "We know people can change, otherwise she wouldn't be here right now and I wouldn't be with her. And we are, so they can!"

"No, I've never committed an illegal act," Equius told them, making Aradia roll her eyes inside the concealing shadow of her hood even though it was the technical truth. "I simply prefer not to use my powers."

" _Ugh_ , you're one of _those_ types? Your boyfriend is borrrrrrrring, Maid of Time! You need to find someone better if you want to match Team Spinneret's greatness!"

But though she let the subject drop then, if was obvious that his answers hadn't satisfied her. From then on whenever Aradia and Equius ran into her and Breath she stayed strangely quiet for herself, studying him like there was something hovering just on the edge of her memory. Aradia just hoped that Spinneret never realized she'd probably seen his face unmasked dozens of times on the news and in magazines over the years.


	16. Friendship

Aradia was more exhausted than usual during the days after her nights spent patrolling with Equius. Their wanderings together had added a good four hours to her usual nightly routine, and though she _could_ just go back in time four hours before falling asleep to make up for that extra time it didn't seem right to. If she was going to add another few hours to her night she should use them to go on searching for the murderer, not to selfishly catch a nap.

Besides that, Equius couldn't go back in time to make up for the extra hours that _he_ stayed awake to be with her, so it wouldn't be fair to him if she did. Anyway, she kind of liked snuggling in to fall asleep beside him after a long night, even if she always woke up still too tired to feel like doing much of anything during the day.

In spite of that, when Sollux called her a few days into their patrols asking if she wanted to grab lunch with him she appeared beside him behind the diner he'd chosen the instant he told her the coast was clear. Best friends were more important than rest.

"I'm sorry I've been out of touch lately," she apologized at once. "Everything's been so crazy since the murders, I haven't had a lot of 'being Aradia' time."

"Nah, it's fine AA," he told her. "You've got a lot of shit on your plate, I get you not having time to fill an asshole friend in on all the details until it's over. But there's something I figured you'd want to see. Talk about too, maybe."

He waved a rolled up paper at her, and her eyebrows raised. "Aren't you the one who tells me newspapers are dying so I should stop liking them?"

"This isn't a normal fucking newspaper, AA. Come on, let's grab food first."

The diner was one they'd been at dozens of times since she'd first gotten her powers and they realized they should start avoiding their old haunts in case someone recognized her. The food was pretty good for how cheap it was, although even things which didn't need to be cooked always seemed to turn out strangely greasy. Ordering was quick when they could both name their favorites off the top of their heads, but it wasn't until the food was actually sitting in front of them that Sollux finally let her see the paper.

Even though Aradia had known that anyone could see her and Equius when they patrolled together and that rumors were sure to start from it, it had never really crossed her mind that anybody might make a big deal of it. And even though she'd known that some of her more fervent fans would probably be upset about the rumors, she hadn't thought that anyone else would really care unless it was to be happy there was another hero on their streets.

So she was taken by surprise when she unrolled the paper to reveal that it was a local tabloid with a picture of the two of them stealing a quick kiss on an empty street plastered across the front. The article that went with with the picture was disgusting, accusing her of ignoring the unsolved murders to strike up a superhuman romance and lambasting her for apparently having so little concern for the people in her city. She hated reading it, and hated it all the more for being inspired by a photo of what had been a quiet moment of peace, one that to her looked sweet even from the outside no matter what the author tried to twist it into.

And she _especially_ hated it for breaking news to her best friend that she really should have given him herself. But when she looked up at Sollux again he didn't look at all upset or accusing, and he just sounded curious when he asked her quietly enough for no one else to overhear, "So what's the story with the cat guy? Is he the same fucker who was harassing you awhile back?"

The question made her feel even more terrible, that he still thought of Equius that way when she hadn't in ages. He knew so little about their situation when she should have called him over a week ago to fill him in on the big new turn her life had taken.

But, she realized, she really hadn't talked to him about Equius since back in the days when she was first getting to know him and would vent to Sollux and Feferi about the crazy man who'd figured out how to make her show up whenever he wanted. It had just been too embarrassing to admit it when their relationship had shifted to her regularly, chastely, staying over in the same crazy man's home. It didn't matter that she could try to justify it as being because his spare bed was so comfortable, and his food was so good, and she could do things like watch TV or use electricity for more than four hours a day without worrying about the price of fuel for the generator; he just wouldn't understand. And he definitely wouldn't understand if she started adding that she also liked being there because Equius had turned out to be less crazy and more somebody she could spend hours talking to, or even just that his cousin was the sweetest person since Feferi.

So how could she have seemingly out of nowhere told him that she'd started dating Equius? Or whatever it was they were doing with each other.

The only defense she had was that their relationship had progressed so slowly that there had been no real moment where she'd realized that Equius had gone from just being this strange person to being sort of, in a way that didn't involve anything like normal dating, her boyfriend. The change had been a _long_ time happening, and had already felt like a settled thing by the time she'd even noticed it, not like a shocking new turn in her life that she'd needed to run off and share with Sollux.

Nothing had felt like that until a week and a half before, when she'd realized for the first time just how serious things between them had gotten. And as much as she loved Sollux she _wouldn't_ want to gossip with him about how she lost her virginity any more than she'd expect him to tell her about his and Feferi's sex life, if it existed. He was too close to being a brother to her for Aradia to feel comfortable going into detail about _that_ type of thing with him.

But for everything else, she really did need to make up for lost time. "He is. I've kept on seeing him all this time," she admitted. "I wasn't trying to hide it from you! I just stopped needing to complain about him when I got to know him better, and there's so much I _couldn't_ tell you because if you knew too much you might figure out who he is and his civilian identity isn't mine to give away."

"AA, stop," he said, holding up a hand to silence her. She did what he asked with wide-eyes, a little afraid that he was going to say it was too late to try making up for lost time and get angry at her for taking so long to try. But instead he just said, "Listen, you don't need to try getting through all that here. All I gotta know right now is, do you two actually _like_ each other? This isn't some creepy-ass Stockholm shit from all the time he forced you to hang around him, right?"

"He never _forced_ me to stay around him for more than the two seconds it took me to tell him to knock it off, Sollux. I didn't even need to do that, if I was willing to let him get caught for the things he would have done. And I know that's the stupidest, most bizarre way of getting somebody's attention, but he really does care about me. And..." Aradia pushed back her hair to keep herself from giving into the urge to hide bashfully behind it, feeling herself blush, "...I really care about him too. I mean, one of me instinctively went to him for comfort when she was dying. That says something, doesn't it?"

And that seemed to be what he wanted to hear, because he smiled faintly and nodded. "Okay, AA, that's all I needed to hear. You can fill me in on the rest later. There's just one more thing I want out of you." He leaned towards her, his face turning serious. "Promise you won't leave me out of the loop again, okay?"

"Of course, Sollux! And there's nothing else you're out of it about, I promise." Impulsively she pushed herself to her feet and walked around their table to give him a hug. "You're still my very favorite person, you know," she said quietly. "You don't need to worry about that changing."

He patted her awkwardly on the back, as uncomfortable with sudden physical affection as ever. "Fuck AA, don't worry about stuff like that. It's not like I don't know it'll be good for you, knowing more people again. You used to have five billion friends; just me and FF couldn't really be enough."

"But you were, you really really were. You were just the people I needed." And she meant that with all her heart.


	17. Showdown

The next time the murderer struck it was more awful than Aradia could have imagined, not because of the method of the deaths but because of the victims. _Visiting Heroes Spinneret and Breath Found Dead_ , the headlines screamed. Their bodies had been found bludgeoned to death in an alleyway that looked like a tornado had torn through it.

Aradia tried to look on the upside; it guaranteed that there would be four people with superpowers there for the fight no matter how Spinneret felt about team ups. But that upside didn't seem so bright when the murderer had already managed to kill two of them, three if she counted her own other self.

With others there to distract him she should at least have a better chance to loop herself through time to increase their numbers, but she wasn't sure how much that would even help. She knew that the killer was fast and strong enough to beat her, so would extras even matter? Especially extras who were already doomed to die. Beyond that, with Spinneret and Breath's powers apparently equally unable to stop him Equius' strength seemed like the thing they'd need to rely on the most, and seeing copies of her keep falling dead at his feet probably _wouldn't_ put him in the best mental state for fighting.

For the first time Aradia went to Equius' home when it was still full daylight out, though she had to run downstairs a story to find Nepeta and ask her to fetch her cousin to see him; she made a mental note that she really needed to trade phone numbers with him now that there was no point in hiding hers. They needed as much time as they could get to plan a strategy, but even then what they came up with wasn't that great.

They couldn't warn Spinneret and Breath ahead of time, because Spinneret would only insist that they butt out of _her_ fight and with her powers she was perfectly capable of forcing them to. They _could_ try getting Breath alone, since she knew he was more willing to work with them, but Aradia didn't think that he'd be willing to lie to Spinneret's face if she asked what they'd wanted with him which would lead to the same problem. So they'd just need to try catching them right before the murderer was meant to appear, when there'd be no time left for Spinneret to raise a fuss about their presence.

At least, Equius would. He agreed, with prodding from Nepeta, that if he had to watch Aradia constantly getting herself killed to protect her primary self it would be too great a distraction for him to keep his head in the fight. Instead they chose to position her on the roof of one of the buildings bordering the alley, where she could watch the fight but stay out of it. She'd only join in when she saw one of the others take a serious blow, to push them out of the way and likely take it on herself then get out of there before Equius really had time to see what had happened to her.

Apart from that the plan was pretty much just Equius trying to land one solid blow. It wasn't the most tactically brilliant strategy that had ever been conceived, but unless the killer was hiding powers beyond his speed up his sleeve it would be enough.

Or would have, if the plan had even gotten off the ground. Instead it fell apart even as she was settling down into a spot where she could clearly see Equius meeting Spinneret and Breath, ruined by a rasping voice muttering just behind her shoulder, "Well, who's this meddling motherfucker I see again?"

Aradia moved on pure instinct, not wasting any time to crane around and see who was talking or what they were about to do but pushing herself straight off the edge of the building. An instant later she found out that she hadn't moved a second too soon; as she started to fall she could heard concrete shattering behind her as the killer's club smashed down into the space where she'd been sitting.

Then that sound was overwhelmed by the music in her head, and she went from falling through the air to standing beside the other heroes. "He's on the roof!" she gasped out.

Except that he wasn't anymore. There was a flicker beside them and a club flashing towards Breath. Aradia was faster, as fast as time itself, and she was in the way before any of the others even had a chance to realize what was happening, her ribs shattering underneath the blow. She heard Equius bellow and Breath yelp and then she was away from them, letting her body drop into icy water and leaving the fight to the her still in the alley.

Aradia could tell by the look of concentration on Spinneret's face that she was trying to use her powers against the man, but as her expression turned an equal mix of frustrated and enraged it became clear that they weren't working against him. At any other time she would have enjoyed finding something she could tease Spinneret about for a change, but in their situation it was just _awful_. Her powers left her even less prepared for a serious fight than Aradia's own. At least Aradia's lack of offensive abilities forced her to recognize her own human frailty and she'd been training every day since she'd decided to fight the good fight to make up for it.

Spinneret, on the other hand, _relied_ on her mental powers to get her through every situation without having to lift a finger. It quickly became obvious that she had little idea how to defend herself without them when the killer focused on her. "Don't try to get all up in my fucking head, motherfucker!" he shouted at her, a marked contrast from the low rasp he'd spoken in before.

His obvious rage, ignoring everyone else in favor of closing in on Spinneret, was enough to make Aradia wonder if Spinneret and Breath had actually been targets of his in the original timeline. Maybe they'd just noticed him on the roof, and when Spinneret had used her powers on him it was enough to set him off.

But she didn't have time to worry about that; defending Spinneret was more important than trying to work out a madman's motivations. At least with him focused on her Aradia also only needed to concentrate on one place, instead of trying to keep her eye on all of them at once so she'd be ready to protect anyone who needed it.

Breath was trying to help too, she could tell as she put herself between Spinneret and one blow, and then another. The killer's hair was being blown straight back by the force of the wind blowing against him, but somehow he was still able to keep struggling forward and strike with enough force to kill. Even when Breath's tactics changed and he started slamming bits of alleyway debris into the killer on the wind he didn't seem to notice.

And for the first time, when his hair was pushed out of the way, Aradia was able to get a good glimpse of his face. It was a mess of pancake makeup, like he was trying to capture the essence of every horrible clown that had ever given a child nightmares on his own face. She was so caught up in staring at it that for a moment she didn't even realize that it was her own primary self that she'd put in front of Spinneret this time, so caught up in trying to get a good look at him that she forgot to wait for something to happen that she needed to change.

She remembered herself with just enough time to get herself out of the way of a blow aimed at her head, but it turned out that she didn't need to. Equius had finally managed to grab the killer's arm in spite of his speed, holding it with enough strength that the sound of bone cracking was clear to all of them. He twisted him around, ready to make the final blow.

And then they both went still.

The killer was the first to get over whatever spell had overtaken them. "Equius? That you, motherfucker? What the fuck are you doing, all wearing Nepeta's fucking clothes?" he asked, his voice back down to the rasp.

"Equius?" Spinneret echoed in a whisper, and Aradia flinched at the other woman finding that out but she was too fixed on the scene in front of her to start any damage control.

"You here to see what I'm up to, motherfucker? I know you can't be trying to stop me, not when it's all thanks to you, all _your motherfucking fault_." For a moment his voice raised back to a shout, then it quickly dropped again, becoming something almost like cheery. "You're the one who convinced me to get the drugs out of my brain, my brother. It's so fucking clear what this motherfucker needs to do now. Gonna fill the world with some beautiful motherfucking miracles, Equius, all we've gotta do is paint it up with blood."

Finally Equius managed to get a word out, his voice cracking on it like a boy's; " _Gamzee?_ "

Gamzee grinned with all his teeth showing, but when he started to talk again his voice began to raise once more, growing louder and louder until it felt like the entire city had to hear it. "But it looks like you've got some new motherfucking friends now, that why you never called or visited while I was off at the fucking clinic for you? Make new friends and ditch the motherfucking old, that how it is?"

"I didn't know where you were, Gamzee," Equius protested, sounding sadder than Aradia had ever heard him outside of the night that he'd watched her die. "You never told me where you intended to go, and your parents didn't--"

" _Makes no fucking difference,_ bro!" Gamzee yelled, wrenching his arm out of Equius' loosened grasp. "I'm just gonna have to make sure you can _never_ fucking forget about me again."

Then his hands were around Equius' throat and it didn't even occur to Aradia that there was no reason to believe he'd be strong enough to do any damage that way. All she could think was that she'd already lost the two people she loved most and been unable to save them even with all the power she had at her hands. She would _not_ let it happen a third time.

When the music started in her mind it wasn't the delicate tinkling of a music box the way it always had been before. This time she heard the powerful tolling of a clock tower's bells, the great resonant sound of them rolling all through her body. From the startled looks Spinneret and Breath gave her it seemed that for the first time she wasn't the only once who could hear it, but she didn't have time to wonder about that.

She held up her hands and saw that red energy was flaring from them. " _Stop_ ," she said, her voice a calm clear command without any hint of panic tainting it, her eyes blazing. And Gamzee did, freezing suddenly in space and time, a shimmering clock face appearing in the air around him with its hands unmoving.

Breath was the first one to break the shocked silence following the use of her powers. "That was _awesome_! How did you do it?"

"I-I don't know," Aradia stammered, staring at her hands. There was still a faint glimmer of red light around them as she kept Gamzee trapped. "My powers haven't ever effected anyone but myself before."

Then her attention was caught by Equius breaking away from Gamzee. For a moment she was ready to run to him, then she noticed that he was moving with the strange jerkiness of someone controlled by Spinneret.

Aradia whirled around to face her, but before she could say anything Spinneret waved her off without taking her narrowed eyes off Equius. "Back off, Miss Maid, I won't do anything to your boyfriend."

But those words were immediately proven a lie when she broke every rule of hero etiquette by making Equius snatch his cowl off his head before she released him. "I knew it!" she shouted triumphantly. "I _knew_ I knew you from somewhere, you shouldn't have ever thought you'd be sneaky enough to outfox me! Maaaaaaaan, I should have known it the minute I found out your power was strength! My mom's the whole reason you aren't still a complete walking disaster, after all!"

"Vri--" Equius began to say, his expression shocked, then his mouth snapped shut in another obvious burst of her power.

"Ah ah ah!" she chided him. "In front of your girly here it's Spinneret or nothing. But you'd better get out of here before the police come to see what all the fuss was about, unlesssssssss you want people wondering what a fine young businessman was doing meddling with all of us."

Equius hesitated, but Aradia waved for him to go, her hands leaving glimmering streaks in the air. "It's okay," she told him. "Dealing with the police is something I _don't_ need protection for, and she has a point. You're well known enough that your disguise might not hold up if they see you in the light and get to hear your voice."

"Very well," he gave in. "But there's one thing you must know; when the police ask, his full name is Gamzee Makara."

She watched him start to walk away, and when she saw the slumped line of his shoulders she couldn't resist giving him at least one thing to make the night a little less awful for him. "Equius!" she called out, and when he turned his head towards her she told him, "I'll be home soon."

From the look in his eye before he moved on again, she could tell that he'd noticed the message in her choice of words.


	18. Epilogue

Talking to the police took a long while, even though once they were in better lighting everyone could see that the killer's shirt was still splattered with old unwashed bloodstains that they assumed, and hoped, would turn out to be genetic matches to the first three victims.

Spinneret's ego didn't help with trying to get through things quickly. She clearly wasn't happy that the officers who took their statements obviously gave their own local hero more attention than her, and made sure everyone knew it. Breath tried to calm her, but when he unthinkingly mentioned that maybe they got worried around her because she used to be a bad guy she got more riled up than ever. Apparently people doubting that she'd really put aside her villainous past was a sore spot for her.

They explained away Equius' absence by claiming he'd been injured in the fight and needed his wounds seen to, an excuse that Aradia knew would probably make people jump to conclusions if he was never seen again. She thought that would probably be a good thing; if people assumed that Void was dead it was less likely that someone would one day look at a photo of him and realize that he looked suspiciously similar to Equius Zahhak.

It was much later that night when she was finally free to go, but with a small twist of time she was able to beat Equius back to his room by a good while. She meant to wait for him to arrive, but after such a long night the warm softness of his bed was too much of a draw to her. She kicked off her shoes and wiggled under the covers, telling herself that she was just making herself comfortable for her wait, but was already napping by the time he arrived.

She woke up to the feel of the bed dipping under her when he sat on its edge, and cracked open her eyes to quietly watch him pull off the pieces of the costume Nepeta had made him. When he was done he crawled into the bed beside her, pulling her close, and it was only then that one of them broke the silence. "How often are you in fights like that?" he asked.

" _Never_ like that before," she told him. "There are ones that are difficult sometimes, but almost never bad enough that I'm afraid I might lose. And... nights when I die that many times are incredibly rare, but it happens more often than I'd like. I mean, it happening ever is more often than I'd like." She knew that it wasn't the nicest thing to say, that hearing about times her other selves had died was painful to him, but she didn't hold back. She knew he'd rather she be honest than kind.

"I shouldn't have denied your request to join you all that time ago," he said, running his hand up her back to bury it in her hair and pressing his forehead against hers. "I don't believe I ever really understood what it must be like for you to go out and fight every night until now. Seeing photos of the aftermath is nothing like being in the middle of it all."

But she shook her head and cupped his cheek with her hand. "I don't blame you for that. I know you have a life and couldn't risk throwing it away. I get that. The only reason I could is..." she trailed off, unsure if he'd even want to hear it.

She could do what she did because she _didn't_ have a life. Her life, and the person she should have been, had both been stolen away from her in that earthquake years before. She'd only had remnants to cling to, two friends in all the world and a lonely house in the middle of nowhere. It was an easy life to risk.

It wasn't so easy anymore. She could still fight, but she couldn't take the risks she'd used to. In the past she would have been perfectly willing to just throw herself against Gamzee in waves, sacrificing however many of herself it took to wear him down and fully aware that if she wasn't fast enough her primary self would end up dying. She couldn't do that anymore, and she'd only realized it that night when she'd seen Gamzee's hands at Equius' throat and found the strength in her to freeze another person's time.

And with that realization came another strong enough to make her shake. She could _freeze time_ outside of herself. It was the one thing she'd always wished for, a way that she might be able to go back and save her mother even if she was halted at the moment of her first death. It was still likely that there was nothing she could do, the last look she'd had of what her mother's body had looked like still showed up in her nightmare, but there was always the faintest chance that she'd still been alive. That if Aradia stopped time before anything else could hit her she'd be able to get her to a hospital and save her, erasing all the years since and rewriting them with a world where she still had a family and never needed to hide.

A world where she'd never feel the need to become the Maid of Time, and Equius would never have any reason to notice she existed. And even for her mother, even though she knew that the her who got to live in that new world would never miss a relationship that she'd never known, Aradia couldn't accept that. She couldn't give up her life with him.

She pressed her face into his neck so he wouldn't be able to see the tears welling up in her eyes as some place inside of her that had been clinging to the dream of that other world even after so many years let it go at long last. "It doesn't matter why," she finally finished her earlier thought, "it's not the truth anymore anyway. Equius, I want to see something."

He watched curiously as she sat up enough to undo the clasp of her necklace, dropping the chain and pocketwatch into her lap until she was only holding the two rings. She tried on her mother's for the first time since she'd gotten it and found that she'd grown enough for it to almost fit on her left hand, still the tiniest bit loose but not enough for there to be any danger of it falling off. When she picked up Equius' left hand she found her father's ring had the opposite problem on him; it was large enough to go on him but she needed to force it a little.

Well, it wasn't as though rings couldn't be resized. There was no rush.

She linked her fingers through his and lifted their hands together, so it was easy to see the gold bands gleaming on each of their fingers. "This looks right, don't you think?" she asked. She knew that she should be feeling nervous, but she honestly didn't at all. She wasn't promising anything or trying to make any plans, just acknowledging something that it seemed obvious would be important sometime in their future.

He didn't seem so calm, his breath coming faster and his voice shaky when he replied, "I... yes. I've thought it would before."

She hummed in response and turned her eyes away from the rings to look him in the face. He was staring at their hands like someone had just dropped the world into his lap. "I think tomorrow I'll start moving a few things in here, if that offer to stay is still available," she told him, settling back against his shoulder. "And then... one day I'd like to find a way for you to meet a friend or two of mine. Ones I know can keep a secret."

He pulled his eyes away from the rings to look up at her at last, his eyes warm and wondering. "Of course. I have been waiting for you to say that for a very long time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading all this way, and to my wonderful artist for her enthusiasm and help with editing! And as one final reminder, since I know it can be easy to forget something _way_ back at the start of 50k+ words, [there is also an FST for those interested.](http://haku-kaen.livejournal.com/138854.html)


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